Bob Santella is CEO of IPC, a technology and service company powering the global financial markets. 

Well known for its trading turrets — specialized communication tools with specific capabilities to meet the demanding needs of financial traders — the company has been around for almost 50 years. It also operates a secure global network for voice and data.

Like everything in the financial world, technology has dramatically changed trading, from floor trading to voice trading, and now electronic. Is voice still around, or has it been replaced by electronic?

Voice doesn’t get as much visibility as other parts of the trading ecosystem, but it is as important or more important than what it was. It is still a large part of how people trade around the world in all asset classes. We have a global network, so you can press a button and get a counterparty on the other end.

How are voice traders working during the COVID-19 crisis?

Some traders are working at home, some are going into offices — which have been differently configured — and some are working in remote locations. Our customers need to work every day because the markets are open.

Are banks putting them up in hotels to avoid commuting?

No. In Manhattan they typically try to draw on people who live within half an hour, which by car is pretty easy with the light traffic. There is not a lot of hoteling of staff. They also have A-B teams, where an A team works for two weeks and then stays home two weeks and is replaced by the B team for two weeks — the incubation period for the virus.

When traders move home, do they take the turret home with them?

Yes; remote PCs can also use the soft client capability of our Unigy platform. A soft client trader can work at home or at a remote location and access the network, and we can voice record and meet all the compliance requirements the banks have.

“A LOT OF FIRMS LEARNED THEIR LESSON FROM 9/11 AND ESTABLISHED REMOTE LOCATIONS ON LONG ISLAND OR IN SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY. THEY CAN FLIP A SWITCH WITH US AND WE CAN GET THOSE UP AND RUNNING IN A FEW HOURS FOR PRE-DEFINED LOCATIONS.”

Where are the remote locations?

A lot of firms learned their lesson from 9/11 and established remote locations on Long Island or in southern New Jersey. They can flip a switch with us and we can get those up and running in a few hours for pre-defined locations.

How does home trading work?

Traders go through their at-home internet, it is mapped back to our data center, and we take it over from there. We work with traders in primary sites, remote sites, and some who are okay to work from home. We are dealing with all three. Clients are finding they can work at home, and the quality of the voice is pretty good, even with volumes that are two to three times the normal.

What’s the experience been like so far?

Firms are finding the work-at-home environment and ability to work remotely has worked well, even better than expected. Banks, brokers, and the big buy-sides that invested in business continuity and disaster recovery plans find it’s paying off now. People may have thought previously it was overkill with compliance and risk, but a lot of clients were now well prepared to move people quickly. They had well-defined policies in place to support trading. It is heartening to see the preparation we went through with our clients has paid off.

How long does it take to transition to remote or home work spaces?

We are working with customers to get things done quickly, like supporting 1,000 soft client licenses on a single Sunday night recently. 

We have had 100% uptime across more than 6,000 end points. The big banks and brokers have done a remarkable job in how quickly they moved and how stable the systems are.

What long-term impact will the disaster recovery experience have?

This experience has accelerated the move to cloud, which has been in the works for a number of years. The pace of change in capital markets is a little slower because our clients make a long-term commitment, five to seven years. I think people will leave this situation making sure their disaster recovery plans work the way they are supposed to.

How big an investment does this take?

When it comes to the hosted environment, we are moving to subscription model rather than a big upfront cost. Our disaster recovery (DR) and a business continuity plan (BCP) subscription is a much more flexible model.