Leonteq to move core processes into the cloud

Leonteq has entered into a collaboration with Google Cloud to increase its distributed (grid) computation capacities using infrastructure from Google Cloud, as part of its ‘ongoing business transformation’. As a leader in its field, Google Cloud offers Leonteq additional flexibility and performance at scale for its core grid computation processes, creating benefits throughout all business functions.

This initiative is part of Leonteq’s key strategic plan announced in mid-2018 to transform its business model with a focus on ‘delivering enhanced scalability and further growth, achieving optimized capital usage, and completely renewing the investment experience for clients and partners based on a fully digitalised approach'.

‘As we continue transforming our business model towards a higher degree of scalability by innovating our technology platform, it is of high importance that we work with a company also pushing the boundaries of what is and what is not possible,’ said Lukas Ruflin (pictured), chief executive officer at Leonteq.

As seen recently with other providers such as BBVA which teamed up with fintech provider FinIQ to launch BBVA ePricer - a cloud-based web solution for its equities and credit-linked structured products, Leonteq is seeking to leverage the Google Cloud infrastructure to increase its computation power and grid capacity from two on-site data centres into the cloud.

This will enable the Swiss firm to match the ‘higher computation demand that accompanies business growth and increased demand for the pricing and trading of structured investment products from its clients and white-labelling partners’.

The cloud infrastructure will ‘particularly benefit the expansion of new modules and features’ on the firm’s multi-issuer platform LynQs, its newly-designed AMC gateway client portal, and its Smart Hedging Issuance Platform (SHIP) as the latter moves to become fully operational by mid-2020.

Under the agreement, Leonteq will also work closely with Google Cloud to implement Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), a practice that treats infrastructure and operational aspects as if they were software issues. The Swiss firm sees the implementation of SRE practices ‘as a natural step in remaining at the forefront of technological developments’ following recent developments in its LynQs platform'.

Leonteq has been one of the busiest outfits in the market during the Covid-19 lockdown with a number of high-profile developments during the quarter including a ‘strategic partnership’ with Blackrock to develop and distribute derivative products linked to Blackrock’s fund universe announced yesterday and the onboarding of South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank under a white-label collaboration agreement.