The emergence of open banking. The rise of cloud computing. The widespread adoption of AI. Each of these pivotal 21st century developments has played a role in creating today’s intricately interconnected financial services ecosystem. When LiquidityBook was first founded in 2005, the industry transition away from mainframe-centric architectures and GUI-driven software interaction was only just beginning; RESTful APIs would not see widespread adoption until the 2010s. As pioneers in the trading technology space, our team sought to take advantage of then-revolutionary cloud technology to power an intuitive user experience and satisfy growing client demand for integrated environments.
Fast forward to today, and API-first development approaches are the industry standard, facilitating interoperability between web and desktop applications, and providing an overall faster and more secure way to share financial data. Today’s financial firms, on the buy and sell side alike, often want to use their own internal systems and tool up via API to communicate with third-party platforms like our cutting-edge POEMS, which enables firms to connect, track and execute their trades with unmatched efficiency.
RESTful APIs: An Essential Framework
LiquidityBook’s RESTful APIs are the backbone of our platform, aligning with the core principles of our technology. From the inception of our business, our flexible architecture has enabled clients to seamlessly integrate with a full range of functions and tools across the front, middle and back offices – from synchronizing account data to accessing fine-tuned trading capabilities.
From the start, we’ve prioritized clients’ ability to build custom solutions tailored to their specific trading strategies. Combining this philosophy with an API-driven approach has brought us enormous success, facilitating numerous partnerships with leading firms like Bloomberg, FactSet, Instinet, Virtu Financial and Trumid, and enabling us to expose the right data, at the right time, based on each client’s specific needs and workflows.
In 2022, in response to increased demand for API-centric workflows, we made significant upgrades to our existing suite. Clients were seeking API onboards to extend their capabilities in a highly targeted way, and, with the upgrade, we armed them with a fully customizable protocol for building and connecting with our modular platform at the exact level of granularity required. Today, this work continues.
Out-of-the-Box vs. Fully Customizable: Striking a Balance
As the trading technology landscape continues to advance at a rapid pace, our team of experienced technologists is constantly seeking ways to disrupt the status quo. To ensure our RESTful APIs continue delivering scalability, interoperability and cost efficiency, we cast a wide net to optimize our approach. Above all, we want to precisely meet the needs of our clients so they can immediately extract maximum value from our POEMS – whether that means tapping into a specific subset of functionality or the entire suite of LiquidityBook offerings.
Speed has always been paramount in the capital markets, and yet in recent months, we’ve recognized even greater demand for it. While flexibility is still coveted, clients have expressed the desire to “plug and play” so they can focus on delivering against their core competencies. This ability is especially crucial for high-frequency trading firms, where every millisecond counts, but it holds true for all firms looking to gain an edge while maintaining a focus on operational and capital efficiency. We’ve also heard feedback from developers, who’d like APIs to play nicer with modeling tools in particular.
Taking these pain points into account, a new challenge emerges: how can we continue to provide flexible, yet readily actionable, APIs so clients can derive value quickly and easily? That’s the delicate balance we’re looking to strike in this next phase of our journey to power workflows across the trade lifecycle. To make it easier than ever before for our clients to reach their trading goals, we’re focusing on developing more out-of-the-box APIs. An underlying static layer will make the transition to LiquidityBook solutions (or integration of them into existing tech stacks) even more seamless, while speeding time-to-market and recognition of ROI.
Efficient, But Still Personalized
This revamped infrastructure will create an environment that clients on both sides of the Street can build on. It also enables the LiquidityBook team to document implementations in a way that is smoother, quicker and more beneficial for all parties. Let’s consider a few examples.
- Let’s say a sell-side firm is looking for real-time, front-office functions that can be automated via API, like placing, modifying or changing orders. They can opt into a base-level API and get started almost immediately.
- For a client that desires only specific functionalities, we can work with them to iterate and customize select features.
- If a large firm wants to maintain their own internal OMS and is only interested in our FIX connectivity hub, that can be managed via API, too. Our team can dig in further and create a custom solution that aligns with their specific trading approach, delivering the precise features needed to grow and scale their business.
Charting the Path Forward
As industry firms continue to adapt to keep pace with demands from clients and regulators alike, they’ll require APIs that keep pace and tightly integrate with their own evolving infrastructures. Our client-first mindset remains a constant, as does our mission to arm buy- and sell-side firms alike with powerful tools that enable highly configurable workflows.
While it’s impossible to predict the next groundbreaking technology that will revolutionize the trading landscape, we are committed to continuously enhancing our RESTful APIs and product suite to support functions across the entire order lifecycle – and beyond. Whatever that next frontier proves to be, LiquidityBook will aim to ensure our clients are ready to embrace what’s next.
Interested in learning more about how LiquidityBook is helping firms achieve operational efficiency, automation and excellence? Drop us a line.
