< The 2016 Trading Technology 40
24
Veronica Augustsson
Chief Executive Officer
Cinnober Financial Technology
Last year: 32
Founded in Stockholm in 1998, Cinnober Financial Technology made its mark in posttrade systems and gained global prominence in the postcrisis period with advances in real-time clearing for such customers as Brazil’s BM&FBovespa, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and LME Clear in London. Veronica Augustsson, who has worked for Cinnober since 2002 and been CEO since 2012, has steered the company in new directions — notably, on the trading end, in a deal with the Australian Securities Exchange, and with surveillance technology, of which the New York Stock Exchange is a marquee user. Cinnober announced an initiative last May with CRYEX Group, a Swedish start-up awaiting regulatory approval for an exchange and clearinghouse for both conventional currencies and cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Augustsson, 37, is also advocating higher quality standards for financial technology, making her case in an April 2015 white paper. “Compare the financial industry to airplanes or pharmaceuticals,” she says. “They have standards for quality. They have defined what quality is.” Once quality is defined, it can be measured and those in charge can make decisions accordingly. Augustsson contends that there often is too little information to estimate, for example, the return on a given investment in quality control. “We can’t really compare quality because we haven’t defined it,” she says. “It’s a very dangerous situation.” Augustsson hopes to convince the industry that there is a business case for defining and standardizing quality. Well-reasoned investments in prevention, she believes, will be far less costly than the outages that have plagued financial market operations in recent years.
2016 Trading Technology 40Click below to view profiles
|