June 27 Open Source in Fintech Series Recap - Silicon Valley Bank

Nearly 50 technologists, executives and entrepreneurs in financial services and fintech gathered for FINOS’ June 27 meetup at Silicon Valley Bank in the Flatiron District.

Gab Columbro, Executive Director, Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) kicked off the evening with a warm welcome and a reminder of some key benefits of open source - it levels the playing field for large and small firms, is a key resource in developing and promoting open standards, can improve time to market, results in a better user experience and can help attract and retain staff. He encouraged all attendees to participate in the Open Source community and ended with a reminder that FINOS embraces collaboration from all participants.  

Following Gab’s kick-off came Deb Bryant, Senior Director of Open Source and Standards at Red Hat, Inc., the evening’s keynote and an industry veteran in the adoption and use of open source software. Speaking to what Deb described as “a range of participants representing the organizational breadth of the industry - from developers to senior management, entrepreneurs to traditional bankers” she focused her presentation on three primary areas: the open source model and developers; what membership and contributors need from a foundational standpoint; and stumbling blocks and mistakes to be avoided.  

At Red Hat, developers are encouraged to contribute to internal and external open source projects on their own behalf, i.e. with their own individual email addresses, taking credit and responsibility for their contributions. This is in part because Red Hat recognizes there is status and prestige that comes with contributing and adding value to the open source community across a wide range of projects, including those that are not necessarily revenue generating or that RedHat can commoditize.

Regarding what membership and contributors need from an Open Source foundation, open standards topped the list. Closed standards make it difficult to collaborate and coming together to create common standards delivers real value. This also means that making the process of collaboration as easy as possible, through both process and environment is fundamental - contributors want to contribute code with the least friction possible. This isn’t always cheap but it’s important and enables developers to better become part of the community. With FINOS, “Open Source has found another cooperative foothold in FinTech and the early entrants will see benefits well in advance of late adopters.”

Deb finished up by highlighting a few stumbling blocks she has witnessed during her career.  Don’t start from scratch. The world is full of software; go out and see what others have done. Be truly committed to community and contribution; don’t make the mistake of not putting enough resources behind behind your efforts. Finally, get legal and security onboard. Trepidation from legal and security can be valid but is not insurmountable and often stems from misunderstanding the risks; don’t let this be a roadblock.

Nader Shwayhat, CEO at GreenKey Technologies wrapped up the evening with a short talk about his company’s recent open source contribution of the GreenKey SDK to the FINOS Voice program and why they see open source as critical to their fintech strategy. Nader’s technology aims to be the Alexa of Wall Street with the goal of unlocking the value of voice across financial services. The front end is open source and can plug into numerous other technologies, promoting an open ecosystem of development teams. GreenKey and the FINOS Voice program are defining open voice standards for the development community. He and his team are also engaged in another FINOS initiative, FDC3, where open standards and APIs are a key component of the focus on interoperability.

The Open Source in Fintech Event Series

The Open Source in Fintech Event Series is an ongoing meetup series designed to heighten open source awareness and provide open source education to executives and technologists in financial services and fintech. It is hosted by the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), an organization dedicated to driving open source innovation in financial services.  

The next Event Series meetup takes place on Wednesday, October 3 in New York City.  Additional details can be found here.