Why Wall Street is bullish on mobility
Financial institutions, especially commercial banks, have long been early adopters of mobile and wireless technology. Early on, they adopted mobile e-mail and Personal Information Management solutions, but in the past couple of years they have been quick to integrate line of business applications into their operations. This is where the true return on investment comes in.
There's an important distinction between the ways financial services businesses manage and consume information. Insurance companies generally DO NOT require true real-time capability in the same sense that a trader on the New York Stock Exchange does. On the trading floor, action is quick and people are moving at lightning speed to close a deal. Trades are coming in almost as fast as they are going out. Real-time market data is the important element to business decision making on the floor. Market data feeds arrive in less than a second—tick by tick, as they say. Accuracy and integrity of data is the key to business decision making.
The insurance world is dramatically different. Claims and insurance agents are centered on servicing customers who have damaged properties or experience automobile accidents. Quite often, the relationship with the customer and how well the insurer services their customers is the differentiator. Claims information and customer policies do not need to be updated by the second. Integrity is just as important, but mobile applications do not need to react instantaneously.
All this begs the questions: What are the differences between mobile and wireless, and how does the financial services industry leverage information in an offline and online world?
On and off the trading floor
Action on the trading floor is non-stop. The mass of crowds running from station to station is mind boggling. One wonders how any work gets done amidst the apparent confusion. In fact, just the opposite is true. Shares are traded in the millions of dollars and every tick is carefully analyzed to determine the next move. Like a heated game of chess, traders and analysts are focusing two steps ahead of their competitor to win in a game.
What does any of that have to do with mobility? In the world of commercial banking, real-time and accurate data is a must. Seconds are like hours in a trade and can mean the difference between millions in gains or losses. Traditionally, the markets could not rely on wireless or cellular networks due to the lack of integrity and poor latency. In other words, a wireless connection on a mobile phone was not reliable enough to make trades or receive real-time market information. However, with the combination of Windows Mobile, 3G networks, and revolutionary applications by Microsoft's partners, all that has changed. Two of Microsoft's close partners, WeComm (wecomm.com) and Pyxis Mobile (pyxismobile.com) are leaders in mobile solutions in commercial banking and asset management.
Fig. 1: A Motorola Q running eSpeed UST.
A recent case study in conjunction with Microsoft customers Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners demonstrates some of the previously unimaginable capabilities of Windows Mobile in the area of Fixed Income and U.S. Treasury markets. One of the immediate advantages of Windows Mobile is the ease of the Visual Studio development environment. According to Brent Wilkins, Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald, "Migrating existing PC applications to Windows Mobile is predictable and easy, and new enterprise-class Windows Mobile-powered devices such as the Motorola Q and Palm Treo are sleek yet very powerful." (Fig. 1)
Aside from market data and trading, asset management and financial advisory services on Windows Mobile are very popular. Asset managers can leverage sales and customer data, which are typically kept in hard to reach places, like enterprise customer relationship management systems.
Making the claim for mobility in insurance
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