Open Source in Finance Podcast:  FINOS 2022 Initiatives - Aitana Myohl, FINOS

Audio Podcast Version

Find all of our podcasts at Anchor.fm, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all podcast platforms.

SHOW NOTES 

Transcript

Aaron Griswold 0:05
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. This is Grizz Griswold of FINOS. And this is the Open Source in Finance podcast. And in this episode of the podcast, I talked with Aitana Myohl also of FINOS about some key initiatives and key projects and SIGs that we're working on this year, and the value that they can bring to different segments of our FINOS ecosystem. So with that, sit back, welcome in, and let's cue the music.

Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are, this is Grizz Griswold, Head of Marketing for FINOS. And today, my guest is Aitana Myohl of FINOS. Aitana say hi.

Aitana Myohl 0:59
Hi, Grizz. Thank you for having me today. Very excited. Here.

Aaron Griswold 1:03
I am excited for you to be here too, as people who listen to this podcast regularly, while they're working out know that usually it's just this person in a box is speaking to them from their phone. So I'm happy to have to show people that I have friends, for at least colleagues, it's good. Good to see you. And good to talk to you.

Aitana Myohl 1:24
Thank you. So good to be here.

Aaron Griswold 1:27
Um, so my cat's just left the room. So so now we can really talk. I want to talk to you today about some of the work that we've been doing internally. And that we're really starting to share with, with our members, with our community with our FINOS ecosystem. And so I want to highlight a couple of these things with you. And so, um, let's talk about on projects, and specifically, some projects that are kind of key initiatives for us this year and strategic initiatives for FINOS. So can you explain in a way that somebody who's not involved with these projects, we're going to talk about and maybe outside of the FINOS ecosystem?

What these key projects are, and, and a little bit about them?

Aitana Myohl 2:22
Yeah, sure. So. So taking a step back to, you know, for those who are outside of the FINOS ecosystem as a as a whole. FINOS is an open source community, we are part of the Linux Foundation. And you can think of us as the Financial Services vertical, within the umbrella of the Linux Foundation. And we are a community of developers, subject matter experts, business analysts from across the financial services industry. And our community is primary. I mean, the members of our community are primarily from financial services. But we also have some guests from some from time to time from other industries, which is really exciting.

And our community gets together at FINOS to develop code. We are currently hosting almost 50 open source software and standards projects. And we also host special interest groups, which are venues where the community gets together to discuss use cases or challenges or pain points that they would like to then tackle through open source projects. So our special interest groups do not host or develop code. That is what are our projects do.

And now going back to your question. We really had phenominal growth over 2021. Across the team, our membership, or projects; we welcomed 18 new members, and almost yeah and almost a new project every month, which was amazing. So in 2022 we've grouped some of our projects and activities under this concept of strategic initiatives so so that we can you know best management manage them and best deliver against the FINOS goals and and also to provide the highest value to our community.

So so this year, we're focusing on three initiatives that are Open Regtech, which aims to bring open source to regulatory compliance and financial regulation. Open Source Readiness, which has a goal of accelerating the journey of financial services organizations to open source readiness. And the third one is around desktop interoperability. And as part of this initiative, we're focusing on nurturing and growing the desktop interrupt ecosystem that has flourished around the FDC3, standard, the FDC3 project that we host that FINOS.

Aaron Griswold 5:28
Cool and you know, I want to maybe now that we've explained it, I do want to say to that, in the show notes, we will have links to not only the FINOS landscape, but we'll have links to all the Open Regtech, FDC3, and OSR links, as well, so, so you won't get lost as you're going through this. Let's, let's kind of talk about the FINOS ecosystem, and then the value of some of these projects and SIGs to members of the FINOS ecosystem, and, and, you know, part of the FINOS ecosystem, and we may not touch on each each one of them and the value to them. But um, you know, we have, we have sell side firms, we have buy side firms, we have cloud service providers, we have big tech companies. We have fintechs, Reg techs that we're looking at and and as well as regulators. So, so let's, let's look at Open Regtech. And, and maybe if we can start with, with looking at the value of Open Regtech for banks first.

Aitana Myohl 6:48
Right, yeah. So, so again, Open Regtech, the goal is to bring open source to regulatory compliance, especially for for banks. And what we're seeing is that, I mean, and what our members and bank members are telling us is that regulatory compliance is a very resource intensive activity. And we started hearing from every bank that, you know, they're all reinventing, or inventing their own wheel on something that they all need to comply with. It takes a lot of resources to interpret all of these regulatory requirements, and then to produce the appropriate reports. And it's not just producing any report, the cost of making a mistake, in these cases is, is huge, and it's painful, and you really don't want to make a mistake. So. So that's why we launched Open Regtech, because we think that it is a really good use case, and a really good opportunity for open source collaboration, because it is non it's software that is non competitive. And, you know, it's, it's, you can really leverage the power of the community to develop it and to move faster and to also to some extent standardized, which gets us to the other side of the equation.

Aaron Griswold 8:19
Yeah, exactly. So. So the value for regulators in the standardization. Take us through that.

Aitana Myohl 8:28
Yeah, so the first thing that that we hear from regulators when we speak to them, and you know, we talked about open source, that many of them are very excited about is that open source is transparent by default, which in itself, and we know this, this is a very ambitious goal, but it can eventually lead to more efficient and effective supervision, should we get to a point where regulation is issued in code form. But another very important angle is that it participating and engaging with open source communities allows regulators to tap into the open source talent pool into leverage software that has been developed by the industry and you know, is of the highest standard without having to hire those developers. So so that is another angle that we're looking at very closely and also discussing with regulators. And we always say that are, again are very ambitious vision and FINOS is to get to a point where regulators just issue their regulations and requirements in code form. And instead of, you know, text or PDF or the current formats, and we know it's super ambitious, but at the same time, there are already some very interesting Seeing projects out there around machine readable regulation. automated reporting. So, so it's an exciting space. And and we think there's a lot of potential there.

Aaron Griswold 10:15
It's cool. Yeah. And it was, it was interesting that for the first time in our history of a fairly young foundation that when we did our Open Source Strategy Forum, in, both in London in New York last year, we had regulators on stage as keynotes. And so, um, so yeah, we're traveling down that path. And it might be ambitious, but I'm going to toot our own horn, we've done a lot in the past five years. So see where it goes. Right.

Aitana Myohl 10:53
We actually spoke with with somebody and one regulators innovation office this morning, and she was saying that we're moving slowly, but steadily, so nice. There is progress. And there, yeah, it's exciting. We're excited.

Aaron Griswold 11:08
That's great. We won't tell you who that regulator is or what office they were in. But, uh, who knows, you might see them on stage again. So all right. Um, so So let's move on to Open Source Readiness. And I'll tell you that Open Source Readiness is been close to my heart over the past couple of years, mainly because I first started to work with open source readiness when it was a program that was transitioning into a project and now it's a SIG. But I started working on it on the the website, the the microsite that we're building for it at the time. And so, in order to build a website, sometimes you have to understand, you know, the content that you're putting on there, and how that content should should flow together with everything else. So I started to understand it. And again, it's, it's probably a little less technical, right, compared to some of the other projects that we have. But, um, but so, so maybe go back and give us a little bit more about what Open Source Readiness this is. And then I think probably primarily for like, sell side banks, you know, what type of valuproposition would you see for that particular SIG?

Aitana Myohl 12:25
Yeah, yeah, so open source readiness is really no surprise, it's about getting you ready as a financial institution to safely consume and contribute to open source projects. And, and this is an initiative that is primarily targeted at financial institutions. And you may, our listeners may or may not be familiar with a TODO Group, which is our sibling foundation within the Linux Foundation, which is focused on Open Source Readiness. And I actually encourage anyone listening to check out their GitHub repository and materials that you have some some really useful and valuable content. And, again, we're an open source foundation. So the last thing we want to do is to reinvent the wheel and to do something that has already been done or to produce duplicated materials. So as much as possible, we, you know, we collaborate and we reuse existing open source finance materials. But it's it's important to keep in mind that financial services is a very particular industry, it's highly regulated. And it has a number of requirements and characteristics that really require a more tailored approach to open source readiness and to, you know, address all of those challenges that financial institutions encounter when they when they want to engage in open source. So yeah, in terms of the value proposition of OSR, as we call Open Source Readiness, it's really to get financial services organizations ready to, to consume and to contribute back to open source in a safe, but also in a compliant manner. And as a first step in this enablement, journey, you obviously need to know where you're standing right. So you see need to know where you're at right now and you in order to to know where the next step needs to be taken. So as a first part of this journey, we are focusing in the first half of this year on measurement, and the different methods and and tools that our community could use in order to assess where they are standing in terms of They're Open Source Readiness journey. And then once we have that measurement and that, you know, snapshots, we will be able to best support each one of them in whichever step of the journey they're, they're in,

Aaron Griswold 15:15
Right, because all of our say, Oh, the sell side banks that are members and outside, you know, are non members as well, that are, that are banks, they are really all along this curve, right. As far as some, some are, they all consume, let's put that out there, they all consume, whether whether you know that or not, but as far as contribution like, there, there's licensing, that you have to go through, there's, you know, contribution policies that you have to develop. And, and you may have a bank that, you know, has an OSPO in open source program office, that might be kind of higher, not higher up, but but further along than a bank that is, is just in the consumption area, and, and hasn't figured out how to not only contribute themselves, but allow their developers to contribute not only to the, the projects that that are important to them, but then even sometimes even outside of the organization as well to other open source projects.

Aitana Myohl 16:20
Yeah, and, and the beautiful thing about open source is that you don't need to be, you know, you don't need to have the perfect OSPO setup in order to, you know, get value from your engagement and open source. So at every different stage, and no matter where you are, there is a you know, there is value for you there is yeah, there's value in open source engagement. So, so there's a very exciting part of this journey as well.

Aaron Griswold 16:53
Yeah, definitely. Um, all right. And then let's look at probably one of the kind of the hot topics in finance, fintech, really this particular project with this desktop interoperability, I always almost mess up that word every single time. If I didn't already do that. Like this is a hot topic and it's not you know, not just for a sell side banks, but by side firms fintechs. You know, the entire ecosystem that we see within financial services in the US or FINOS ecosystem as well.

So, so, tell me what desktop interoperability is all about, as far as you're concerned, and why is it strategic to FINOS? And what are the what is the value to some of those different segments? I guess I talked about?

Aitana Myohl 17:51
Yeah, so yeah, so desktop interoperability some, some people call it even a movement. It's, it's all about improving and making workflows more efficient, improving the user experience for traders, and enabling data sharing across applications. And I always like to use examples. And I was reading this article a couple of weeks ago about it, where they quoted an executive from a buy side firm, who shared at a conference that they had to sign into 27 different applications every day, nice switch, you know, as you can imagine, if you could streamline any of those logins, or have, you know, a single sign on, at least for a bunch of those applications, it would really remove a lot of distraction and delays and just make things more efficient and allow that executive in this in this example, to, you know, more efficiently use their time. So yeah, for anyone who's new to FINOS, we host the FDC3 project, which is a desktop interoperability standard. And we've seen a really significant uptick in activity and, and participation in FDC3 meetings and discussions over the past couple of years. And, and the exciting thing is that it's not just one segment of the industry that is interested in this, but it's all around its banks. It's fintech vendors, and more recently, also buy side firms. And the reason for it is that this address is a real pain point. And it's a pain point that can I mean, there are probably different ways to tackle it, but certainly open collaboration and standardization is is one of them and that is what the industry seems to be going for. And and yeah, I think that projects and initiatives like this one, really showcase and actually epitomize the the value of open collaboration and standards. So that is why we are putting a lot of energy into this initiative this year as well.

Aaron Griswold 20:16
Oh, yeah. And I know that for FDC3 in particular, there are some larger changes coming up around the corner from when we're recording this podcast. So we'll point to that, when that does happen. But, you know, I guess let's, you know, thank you for going through the three of those and kind of the value to different sections of our community. Um, so. So, what are the next steps if somebody wants to get involved with any of these three initiatives? What should they be doing?

Aitana Myohl 20:54
Yeah, so the one thing I wanted to make clear is that the initiatives are how we internally at FINOS organize a set of different activities, both internal and external. But what all of these initiatives have in common is that there is an underlying or not underlying but a project or a special interest group that is kind of the venue or the meeting point for the Community around these topics so for Open Regtech, that would be our Reg Innovation special interest group or Reg SIG, which is led by Ian Hollowbread from IMG and David Ehrich from the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, and the open Regtech SIG meets every the fruit on the first Tuesday of every month at 12pm Eastern 5pm UK time.

For Open Source Readiness. We also have a SIG a special interest group that is co-led by VM Basseur from Wipro and Peter Smulovics of Morgan Stanley. And this group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 10am, Eastern 3pm, UK.

FDC3, as I was saying, there's been a lot of activity over the past year. So they have multiple meetings, they have different discussion groups, they have their monthly standard working group meeting. So I would encourage anyone interested in in FDC3 to check out the FINOS community calendar, which lists all of our meetings, project and special interest group meetings. And if you have any questions, or if you cannot find what you're looking for, just send us an email to help@finos.org.

Again, the information is out there on the FINOS calendar. But if you would prefer receiving an invite to any of these meetings, just reach out and we'll be in touch and we'll be happy to support you and help you in navigating the community.

Aaron Griswold 23:12
I was looking at our community calendar for the past month and there was an FDC three meeting every single week. Soyeah, a lot going along with FDC3 right now. And and not only to help fin offset org, but you know, you can sign up for more information on our site. We do have something called This Week at FINOS that goes out every single Monday, that that actually spells out exactly when our meetings are that's also posted on our website as well at FINOS.org.

Aitana thank you for spending some time coming to my home away from home within podcast lan, it's fun to have guests over.

Aitana Myohl 24:04
Thank you so much, Grizz. I I really enjoyed this and I I hope you'll consider me soon.

Aaron Griswold 24:10
Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, you are always invited back to this to this channel. So appreciate that. I just want to say in closing, you know thanks again. for everybody listening, whether whether you were currently working out right now, or driving or walking your dog or if you walk your cat that's cool too we tried it once it wasn't didn't work. Get involved with this Community, it is continuing to grow we've seen exponential growth over the past couple years going into this year.

And find us at finos.org find us on LinkedIn and Twitter. You know, like I said find out sign up for updates from our newsletter or for This Week at FINOS.

We have Slack channels that for the community that you can get involved with too. So there are many different ways that you can find out about what's happening on a weekly and daily basis at FINOS.

And I believe with that again, thank you Aitana and good day, good night, wherever you are.

-=-=-=-=-