Contineo appoints data scientist in transparency push

Contineo has appointed Ada Tong as data scientist in a move to develop new data streams and products based on the information generated by the increasing volume on the platform. Tong will be based in Hong Kong, reporting to Mark Muñoz (pictured), chief executive of the Hong Kong-based messaging network for equity-linked structured products, and her initial work will focus on providing product distributers with useful information around liquidity, helping to inform their work in building new, efficient strategies and improving performance for relationship managers.

This will be the first time anyone has been able to quantify the landscape for equity structured products, according to Muñoz. “It’s been referred to for years as the ‘black hole’ of financial products,” he said. “This week, that all changes.”

Tong’s appointment represents a large step as the company expands its capabilities and keeps its growing subscriber based informed, as well as connected, said Muñoz. “Our data capabilities can achieve telescope depth given our large number of subscribers that are onboarding and the amount of data we see across the entire universe of flow equity structured products,” he said. “The service itself has three components: one which is data specific to a subscriber, another which is global anonymised data analytics, and a third which is unique insights, trends and more.”

The expansion of Contineo’s data services will help its clients make more informed decisions, as well as give relationship managers unique insights and ideas, and provide compliance, risk, regulators and the industry with more transparency, said Muñoz.

Tong started her career in actuarial consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Sydney. In Australia, she also worked for Quantium, providing analytics consulting to retail, insurance, banking and airline clients. She moved to Hong Kong three years ago and led the modelling & insights team at Asia Miles. She has also worked for DemystData, a Hong Kong-based start-up. Currently, she is also an analyst and data science consultant for Cooper Tong Consulting.

Contineo started live operations on June 23 with a number of subscribers to its messaging platform, including AG Delta and Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan and Societe Generale, along with Julius Baer.

Contineo competes with Vontobel’s Deritrade, which was launched in March 2014; the multi-issuer investment products distribution system (IPDS) launched by Leonteq, DBS, Avaloq and Numerix launched in Q1 2015; and the FinIQ EQ Connect platform launched by the specialist software provider in association with Thomson Reuters in December 2014.