Latest opinions that Nigel Farmer has shared on Finextra

Join the Community

22,037

Expert opinions

43,964

Total members

420

New members (last 30 days)

182

New opinions (last 30 days)

28,682

Total comments

Join Sign in

Nigel Farmer

Industry Director, Capital Markets

Software AG

Member since

12 Jan 2016

Location

London

View Nigel Farmer's full profile

Nigel's opinions

Are Smart Contracts getting smarter?

Last week saw the second R3 smart contract template contract summit, following on from June’s summit and Barclays demonstration at the London O2 in April. Dr. Lee Braine from Barclays stated in April that what we saw would take time to build and that further industry collaboration would be required. So it’s good to see from the latest summit tha...

22 November 2016

Data, Data Everywhere, nor any Knowledge to Gain

The management, retention and reporting of huge data volumes is so onerous that many financial services firms are missing out on the value of this data; they are awash in a sea of data with nothing to drink. Banks are dealing with ever increasing volumes of data, from trading data to communications and social media, coming from many different sourc...

27 October 2016 /regulation

Capital Markets Firms Embrace Cloud Transformation

Cloud adoption in capital markets is gathering momentum, led by the increasing acceptance of the cloud by regulators as well as cost cutting at financial services organizations. Indeed, regulators themselves are some of the enthusiastic adopters. Earlier this year the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) decided to host its MiFID II transaction rep...

13 October 2016 /regulation

How to Manage Your IT Spaghetti

Achieving digital transformation becomes more complicated in large banks which are siloed in nature, have evolved and grown through acquisitions and have many legacy systems – or IT spaghetti. Maintenance of these IT systems consumes resources and budgets that can impede a firm’s ability to innovate, slowing down business transformation. So getting...

29 September 2016

CFTC Rules: Preventing the Rise of the Cybermen

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently finalized a set of cyber security rules, designed to help safeguard its systems from breaches; but worries about hacking and possible terrorism remain. There have long been concerns that Cyberman-like terrorists or hackers could compromise the world’s financial markets by attacking exchan...

14 September 2016 /security /regulation

The Blockchain Piece of the Puzzle

Fitting the blockchain piece into an organization’s technology puzzle is going to require both business and technology transformation. Key to any such transformation is going to be in understanding the current IT architecture and being able to visualise where and how the blockchain piece fits in, as well as what systems are going to be affected. Ex...

27 July 2016

Don’t let Regulation Choke Innovation

This year’s FIA IDX International Derivative Expo kicked off with a pointed note of caution to regulators from FIA’s president and CEO Walt Lukken. He said that the industry is facing some real challenges from new regulatory regimes and their costs to FIA members. “Unfortunately, so much medicine has been prescribed since the financial crisis that...

15 June 2016 /regulation

On Your MAR, Get Set, Go!

Under Starter’s Orders: Market Abuse Regulation We are almost under starter’s orders for compliance with the new market abuse regulation (MAR), which comes into force in Europe on July 3rd. Enhancements to MAR across Europe strengthen rules against insider dealing and market manipulation, and add provisions to prevent and detect them. Most firms s...

24 May 2016 /regulation

Smart Contracts are not Smart by Nature

My previous blog about smart contracts highlighted how they could create efficiencies in trade affirmation/confirmation and throughout the trade lifecycle. However, there are still many open questions and concerns about how smart contracts operate in the real world. After all, how do you see and understand the finer details of a smart contract wh...

09 May 2016

Smart Contracts Frame Blockchain Discussion

As blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, makes regular headlines it is becoming clear that many discussions on its use in financial services center around so-called smart contracts. Barclays recently tested a way to trade derivatives using smart contracts with the Corda blockchain-style technology from bank consortium R3. Barclays created ...

29 April 2016