Celent is paying careful attention to the surge of technology transformation in open platform initiatives in capital markets. To better gauge the direction of new technology trends, Celent has also conducted multiple surveys^[1] of capital market participants. The results hint at these companies pioneering new frontiers in capital markets.

For this report, open platform refers to the following: Platforms that, through the offering of published external programming interfaces, enable connection, conversation, creation, and value exchange between multiple platform participants (producers and consumers). For example, technology vendors and third parties will be able to build new products and services on their platform and offer suites for use by third parties (other vendors, service providers, financial institutions). Financial institutions will be able to use the new products and services of those vendors, add features and functionality to the system, and integrate the platform with other systems and/or data to streamline their operations.

The predominant area of interest among global buy side entities is in finding new opportunities through open platforms, as indicated by more than 90% of the respondents. Many of these market players are looking for innovative solutions to vexing business problems.[2]

Moreover, they want the solutions to be credible, vetted by the platform or platform participants, and easy to procure from a vendor risk management perspective. They also want them to be easy to integrate with existing internal systems. The backdrop is that not all market participants are willing or ready to make significant internal changes to connect with the open platform ecosystem at this stage. This presumably is a challenge that some financial institutions are reluctant to tackle or, for a variety of reasons, a step they are unprepared to take.