One of the biggest costs incurred by sell-side firms is for trading: brokerage, exchange and clearing fees and expenses.

Bharat Malesha is executive vice president at SmartStream Technologies responsible for helping banks understand and optimize these costs. He speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the upward trend in costs, and the way that automation is giving COOs and CFOs more visibility and control.

Bharat also discusses the working culture of financial institutions around the world, in both developed and emerging markets, and how technology and digitalization is reshaping how they operate.

Please like, share, and subscribe to get more DigFin VOX!

For all our content, visit: https://www.digfingroup.com

Timecodes:
0:00 - Bharat Malesha, SmartStream
1:04 - The rising cost of fees for brokerage, exchange and clearing
3:35 - How firms have changed their approach to managing costs
7:37 - Optimizing across asset class, marketplace, and volumes
10:11 - Unbundling research from execution
11:34 - The evolving use of technology to gain visibility over P&L
15:09 - Emerging markets versus developed
16:16 - How COOs and CFOs make use of information
17:09 - SmartStream's challenges in working with complex clients
20:42 - Integrating cost optimization to respond to big trends such as Libor's transformation or a market going to T+1 settlement
23:15 - What's next for technology and digitalization