Post Event Recap: The Full FX Scandinavia 2024

Ali Curi: [00:00:00] Markets Conversation is an ION podcast where we discuss topics of importance to capital market participants with product owners, subject matter experts, and industry leaders.

Eugene Markman: The opportunity to me is currently I think you could program AI to analyze the data and answer your question. You could ask it a question, it’ll answer the question.
In the future, what I think is AI is going to analyze the data and then give you the question. These are the interesting patterns that you should look at and we should go further. To me, that’s going to be the big opportunity and that’s when AI will change.

Ali Curi: Hi everyone and welcome to Markets Conversation.
I’m Ali Curi. On today’s episode, Eugene Markman from ION Markets, and our special guest, Colin Lambert from The Full FX will share highlights of the recently held conference in Copenhagen, The Full FX Scandinavia 2024.
We’ll take a quick overview of the FX trade event, as well as dive into the event highlights, key themes and topics, [00:01:00] notable speakers and highlight the main insights and trends discussed. There’s a lot to go over, so let’s get started.
Eugene Markman, welcome back to the podcast.

Eugene Markman: Thanks, Ali. It’s always great to be back.

Ali Curi: And joining us today is our guest Colin Lambert from The Full FX. Hi Colin. Welcome.

Colin Lambert: Hi Ali. Hi Eugene. Pleasure to be here.

Ali Curi: We’re glad you’re here.
Colin, it’s my understanding that The Full FX is the host and producer of this fantastic industry event. But first tell us what does The Full FX do and what is your role there?

Colin Lambert: I’m the co-founder, with Michelle Hempstead, of The Full FX. We both worked at Profit & Loss, which sadly closed in 2020 during COVID.
I’ve been in foreign exchange for 47 years and I did 20 odd years trading. And I’ve been writing about electronic trade in the market structure since. Kind of developed a passion for it. So we thought that there’s a lot of interest-based publishing out there, people talking about why they’re trying to change the industry.
And that’s great, but we thought there’s a space for an independent voice [00:02:00] and we bring my experience to that viewpoint so we can then turn around and say, “Okay, here’s an independent view of what we think is going on.” So I guess it’s as much opinion as it is news. And the conferences, I guess, really come on the back of that.

Ali Curi: And share with us a brief summary of the recent FX trade event, The Full FX Scandinavia 2024. What were the main objectives there and themes addressed during the conference?

Colin Lambert: I guess probably the big thing, Ali, is to say we want to bring our ethos of the publication to our events. So therefore we want people, you know, Eugene was kind enough to speak for us on our technology panel, but we want people who are on top of their game, who have an opinion, and rather than something to sell. Audiences don’t respond to people trying to sell something to respond to an opinion, even if they don’t agree with it, you still engage with them.
So I think we try and bring that ethos there, “Okay, yes, let’s get some opinion on stage.” Obviously [it’s] important that people can network. And I think also for speakers, sometimes [00:03:00] it can help take them outside of their corporate bubble. Obviously there’s a lot of very, very clever people work in this industry, but sometimes it’s nice maybe to sit on a stage with a peer and actually have a two way discussion that you couldn’t have it many other times.

Ali Curi: Great. Thank you, Colin. Eugene, you were also on a panel. Tell us more about that. And I’ll have a question for both of you in just a minute.

Eugene Markman: Sure. Before we go into the panels, I just want to say that we supported P& L when it was Profit and Loss before COVID, before it went down.
The events were great. We’ve attended many of those. When Colin was able to bring back Profit & Loss in its current form and the new more involved form, I was very excited and I think the entire industry is excited by it. It is a forum that feels like it is an insider forum that’s brought by the industry rather than the outsiders trying to do something for the industry, right?
So there really is a great place. It’s a fantastic event. This is the first one that I’ve went to in Scandinavia. Well, the first one Full FX general that I’ve attended. Only early on some of them we did electronically. [00:04:00] I’m definitely looking forward to doing more. So I just wanted to start off with that.
So thank you, Colin. And thank you for joining us as well. To the panels, right? And Ali, your question, right? So as you were asking the panel that, and now that there was a technology panel and actually I thought that one was very, very interesting. We ran out of time. In my opinion, we could have went much longer.
We talked about data. We talked about AI. We didn’t really even get a chance to talk about blockchain in any, any sense of the word, but maybe actually Colin, as the observer, somebody who was listening to the panel, what did you find interesting on the panel?

Colin Lambert: What I found actually interesting, Eugene, was how what I thought to a degree were four disparate panelists actually had quite a lot in common.
There was obviously different approaches being taken to different segments of the business, but what I thought was interesting was everybody had the same challenges. And it’s that four letter word that keeps on coming back again and again and again called data, and how we’re using it. I agree with you.
Unfortunately, what we try and do, we try and keep the pace of the conference going, but this does mean sometimes we go, okay, we could have done another 15 minutes there, but then I always look at it and say, let’s keep the audience [00:05:00] keen for more. So from my point of view, I thought, yes the data issue, we touched on AI, which I think we can discuss in more detail here.
What I thought was interesting was, or maybe something for us to look at going forward is, how we bring those pieces together. You all had valuable pieces of technology in the chain that’s really helping to develop our market. I found myself wondering, okay, is there a way that we actually can bring these things together in a slightly more joined up fashion so that people can actually, I guess, make it more of a supermarket or a department store type of effect and yes, I think blockchain,
I prefer DLT to blockchain. So I like the idea. I think my problem with blockchain to a degree is that we have, I guess, processes that are in concrete, that are set, whereas everybody, a custodian has a different FX workflow to an investment bank, to an asset manager, to a hedge fund and DLT allows us to maybe let those individual processes be part of the chain.
I would have liked to have seen us get into that more, [00:06:00] but then, hey, I need something to do in London.

Eugene Markman: We talked about data and you said that we all had similar challenges. And I think everybody in the industry really has similar challenges. And one of the things that I said on the panel was, I think that we’re solving those at a micro level and a macro level.
The micro level is what we’re all doing. We’re just normalizing, filling out the data, putting common timestamps. We all do this in various forms. Some might do it a little bit better. Some might do it not as well. And some are developing the skills to, kind of, to do it better. But it seems like there’s a lot of people doing the same work.
To me, that seems inefficient. You obviously want to create competition to drive technology, to move forward. But at the same time, if everybody’s solving the same issue, then it becomes redundant. And I think there’s an opportunity there for some consolidation and to have a few vendors who really become the industry norms.
People don’t create their own USB. There’s a USB standard. It works well. There’s a fixed standard. These standards work well. We have standards and other asset classes, much less, much fewer standards in FX. So to solve the data issue, I think these are the things that we need to work at first.[00:07:00]

Colin Lambert: I would agree. I think it’s quite strange because obviously we used to discuss how the liquidity landscape has become fragmented. I think the bigger risk now, given how technology is changing the face of how we do everything, particularly in the workflow, is that data is becoming too fragmented. I guess the interesting point will be inevitably, I think that consolidation you talk about will occur.
I think it has to occur because I think everyone recognizes, as you say, it’s inefficient. What I think will be interesting is how it occurs. Is it going to be the law of the jungle where the weakest are just thrown off the side of the boat or will it actually be through M&A? Will it be through more partnerships?
That I think is an interesting thing because without a doubt, I couldn’t agree more. One of my key takeaways from the conference was data is actually going to be as much of a challenge to us as an industry, as it is, I guess a godsend for people trying to build their business.

Eugene Markman: Beyond data, I think the other topics briefly talked about, digital ledgers.
I think that’s a conversation maybe we’ll [00:08:00] save for another time, as T+1 and T+0 becomes more of a reality. I think that topic will become quite relevant. But the topic that at least my panel, we kept going back to was AI. And after our panel was John Ashworth, he did his TED talk on AI.
I’ve been lucky enough to listen to it a couple of times. I thought it was fascinating. I think this is the first time you got to listen to it.

Colin Lambert: Actually, the second, I’d heard it before as well. So yes.

Eugene Markman: What are your thoughts?

Colin Lambert: First of all, I think John is, seriously impressive the way he holds a stage for 25 minutes without notes.
I think I have to put that on record that there are not many people that could do that. So that was seriously impressive. I also love the way that the TED talk was engaging and different. It was, it was “AI, what’s all the fuss about?” And we all know to your point, yes, AI is changing how we do things.
But I thought what was, for me was, I loved how he brought it to every day concepts. What I thought was interesting and what my takeaway from the talk really is still, I think AI [00:09:00] dramatically changes our workflow in financial markets generally, but obviously FX and rates, et cetera, but I’m not convinced it changes how we trade.
I definitely see it as part of a workflow solution. And at the moment, John’s point was, it’s very much about actually helping support the relationship. And it’s very much about maybe making suggestions here and there. But I think anyone that’s used Amazon or Google know that suggestions can sometimes go a bit awry when it comes to what they think you want to look at and what you actually want to look at.
So to me, it was very much about, yes, this is workflow. I’d love to get a take on how people think AI will change trading. ‘Cause to me, there’s a lot more risks there that I don’t think the industry are willing to take at this time.

Eugene Markman: I think it becomes a powerful tool. It doesn’t become the machine that, doesn’t become the, uh, the driver.
It doesn’t become the machine that’s making all the decisions, but it becomes another tool, like analysis, like data, like every other input you have, right? And it, and it can do a lot of labor for you. [00:10:00] So when I listened to John, I thought that the biggest thing was that. It’s not going to make all your decisions for you, but it could do a lot of work for you to free you up.
So you can have better information to make your own decisions and make better decisions because of that.

Colin Lambert: If you look at the post trade space in particular, we, at the top end, the really good exponents of post trade processing, they use technology pretty much for a hundred percent of what they do.
Their concept is exception-based processing. AI will be the driver, the oversight on exception based processing to my mind. That’s where it’s very powerful at this moment in time. If something happens, AI can actually help you solve it before you even realize it was a problem. And especially with data, sorry, we’re back to data again.
Especially with data, you know, if there are anomalies, hopefully the AI can help solve it. But I do think we have to acknowledge the risk that if there is an anomaly in the data, AI can actually exacerbate the problem.

Eugene Markman: The opportunity to me is currently I think you could program AI to analyze the data and answer your question.
You could ask it [00:11:00] a question, it’ll answer the question. In the future what I think is AI is going to analyze the data and then give you the question. These are the interesting patterns that you should look at and we should go further. As opposed to me pre-programming saying, this is what I want you to find and let me know when you find it.
To me, that’s going to be the big opportunity and that’s when AI will change.

Colin Lambert: I would agree with that because I think it’s obviously there are thousands, in some cases, millions and billions of ways to do one task. The human cannot think of all of them at some stage. Going forward, AI will help you to help you make those.
And ultimately, if you think about it, Eugene, what do people need to do in this world? They need to differentiate themselves. And there was a risk that everybody just goes down the vanilla AI route and what we use in AI tagline, let’s boost the value of the company by tenfold because we’re going to put AI in the title, but in reality, the differentiator, it can become a differentiator for you to your point in terms of how it can actually suggest to you how you approach your client differently.

Eugene Markman: Just to cover some of the other topics, because I think we could talk about [00:12:00] AI and data for quite some time. There’s conversation around liquidity. There’s conversations around NDFs as well. Anything that stood out for you from those?

Colin Lambert: Yes. I think there’s a real disconnect between the buyer side and the sales side.
In terms of everybody I talk to on the sales side tells me, “Oh, liquidity is great. There’s no problem at all with liquidity.” And yet, as I observed at the very start of the conference, every industry survey I look at that surveys the buy side, number one or number two concern is liquidity. And we had a speaker from the buy side talking about this, about their biggest concern was actually liquidity.
I think the liquidity discussion needs to evolve. And this is on me as much as anybody else. If you look at the spot market, LPs are more aware than ever of their data and how their clients are behaving. And I think they’re using it in a much smarter fashion. Where we’re not really dealing with the challenges are beyond spot.
And this kind of does bring us into the non deliverable area because I think NDFs have got a decent [00:13:00] market structure and I don’t think there’s many challenges there, but what I think the non-deliverable element needs to expand into things like FX swaps, because unless we forget, and I speak as an old spot trader and I’m going to be thrown to the wolves by my former colleagues for this, but the swaps market is actually bigger.
And we need to understand that. And I think that’s where the liquidity challenges are. And that’s where I think the non-deliverable formats come in, in the form of, for instance, notation, novations, clearing, better netting, all of which are technology solutions. So to my mind, the liquidity discussion needs to move on from spot where I think the balance is fairly good now. LPs know that certain clients are what they would call toxic. They can have a discussion with the client using the data and they can hopefully evolve their relationship. When we go beyond spot into the NDFs, into swaps, then I think it becomes a much, much bigger issue to me. And that’s what I think [00:14:00] we kind of learned on at the conference that actually the disconnect is real and it’s not going away soon.

Eugene Markman: So when I heard that it wasn’t surprising to me, I think it’s great that LPs can have a conversation with their customers where they look at the same data and you could understand your markouts, you could understand your slippage, so you could understand exactly the trade and its full life cycle and the impact afterwards, right?
So you could understand why your LP It’s pricing you the way that they are. It’s an honest conversation in the spirit of kind of growing the business together. It’s important to have that conversation. Going upstream swaps, if you look at the BIS survey, swaps make up more than 50 percent of the market on a notional basis.
It is a large part of the FX market, probably one that is overlooked because it’s not electronified. Because it’s still mostly voice, still RFS, RFQ, not necessarily streaming. But I think it’s a chicken and egg problem, right? As soon as you hit that critical mass, where you have a demand to automate, then everybody wants to stream it.
Then everybody wants it to be a true electronic process. You know, when you have a currency payer or an NDF [00:15:00] that doesn’t have a lot of liquidity and volumes are quite low, there just isn’t a need for that, right? Swaps, I do see moving in that direction. Behind it, I see options moving, starting to move in that direction as well, though they’re significantly further behind. But I think as far as the order goes, spot is generally there and NDFs, I would say is generally there as well with the exception of certain currency pairs, the volumes aren’t there.
So there’s no need to really automate liquidity and swaps are right behind it though, there is a gap. There is a technological gap that exists there.

Colin Lambert: And I think the solution, rather the tipping point to swaps electronifying is actually nothing new. It won’t be, it’s not gonna be a revelation to anybody.
It will actually be solving the credit conundrum because that came up again and again in several of our panels. It’s about access to credit and it’s about access to the usage of capital. And as regulation evolves, continues to evolve around SACCR, GCB, et cetera, the necessity to actually be more efficient with your capital, I think has to inevitably drive that innovation [00:16:00] and automation of FX swaps.
I think it was, was it Bill Gates who said, “It’s a very slow journey for 10 years and then in 10 minutes it’s done,” something like that. And I’m very paraphrasing a lot there, I have to say, but yeah.

ION Ad: This episode is brought to you by ION. At ION, our award winning foreign exchange software solutions can help you automate and simplify forex trading processes, along with other daily operations and risk management.
We provide an end to end solution across the front, middle, and back office, allowing you to scale, not just for FX, but for capital markets and beyond.
To learn more, visit us today at www.iongroup.com/markets or email us at: [email protected].

Eugene Markman: A couple of other topics I just want to touch on.
So Ali knows we’ve discussed the Global Code here on this podcast a couple of times.
There was a session on the Global Code. Anything that you learned that you could share with us, Colin?

Colin Lambert: Yeah, it was an interesting one, actually, because I think my speakers really pushed in the direction of the work of the Global Foreign Exchange [00:17:00] Committee. Rather than the FX Global Code, which I found interesting because to me, I wasn’t aware that I guess awareness of the GFXE was as low as they thought it was.
So to me, it was interesting that they were still looking for people to go and, you know, help with that. I think The Code is largely embedded in our infrastructure now. Which is a good thing. And I think what struck me about the panel was how we just assumed correctly, I should add, we assume correctly that The Code has been a success and it doesn’t need a lot of changing.
I think it’s well known that I fundamentally disagree on a couple of areas with the code where I do believe we need to be just a bit, we need a bit more clarity and maybe be a bit, harsher. Generally speaking, what struck me about that was how the acceptance of the FX Global Code was universal pretty much, but what they wanted to do was actually get the Global Freight Change Committee doing more.

Eugene Markman: I mean, there’s a balance, right? I think it needs to be a living document. So there’s ongoing work that needs to be done to continuously refine the code. Nobody gets it right the first time at anything that we do. I don’t think that’s a feasible thing. [00:18:00] At the same time, how do you make change at a rate that is acceptable for the market?
Because too much change is also unacceptable, right? Nobody can adopt it. There’s too much change. I think there’s a balancing act. I do want to go back to something you said, just for interest, what are the bits that you disagree with?

Colin Lambert: I believe that we should be enforcing “symmetric last look.” On too many times I look around, I have access to data every, occasionally, where I look at average round trip times for accepts and rejects, and they are sometimes 10 to 20 times longer for a reject. I think that’s unacceptable. The Global Code says you should confirm or firm or complete trades as quickly as you possibly can.

If you can accept a trade in one millisecond, then you should be rejecting your trade in one millisecond, perhaps two, not 20. Last look is something I fundamentally have a problem with, but that’s a generational thing. In my day, I could only imagine what would happen if I’d have turned around and said, “been hit on the price” and then said, “Oh, actually, no, I don’t want to do that, the market’s moved.” They probably would’ve been waiting for me outside the building and it wouldn’t have been [00:19:00] pleasant. To my mind, the “last look” thing, we just need to, let’s reinforce the fact that this has to be symmetric. Why are you holding trades for five times longer on a reject? Because just accept that some clients are going to get it right.
So I think that’s one of my problems. And the other problem is, I still believe we are putting the industry in harm’s way, particularly on the trading desks, which are close to my heart with the whole issue around pre-hedging and hedging ahead of the fix. The GFXE produced two really good documents, which are not part of The Code.

They’re actually addendum to The Code. We need to find a way to get them both into The Code. So there’s no ambiguity whatsoever. People know you should have symmetric last look, round trip times. And people know that these are the rules, or the guidelines, I should stress, sorry, falling into the old trap there, they’re not rules, for the guidelines around how you disclose to your client, how you will handle this order because clients need to accept as well, the buy side needs to accept, a $5 billion dollar order is not going to get done in five minutes or 10 [00:20:00] minutes. It will take longer, so they’re my two main areas. I think the interesting areas coming are gonna be how The Code does adapt to AI again. Sorry, bring up again. And I think there are probably issues around data.

Eugene Markman: I do believe that the FXC needs to continue to refine.
It needs to start thinking about new cases that should be included in The Code. I think two of them, you mentioned, AI, data, that are related, and then also think about how to make the rules clearer, better around things like pre-hedging. I fully agree with you there. It’s going to be interesting.

Colin Lambert: So if I may, from a technology provider such as yourself, do you also think that there’s an opportunity here for The Codes to maybe look at best practices for people providing what is pretty critical infrastructure to players.. Does it do enough there?

Eugene Markman: I don’t know if there’s a need, right? Because there are standards already and you have standards like ISO and SOC 2 that majority of the companies follow when they’re not being followed, it’s up [00:21:00] to each customer, underlying customer, to decide whether they want to sign off on that risk or they don’t.
I mean, perhaps, I don’t know if I would agree that The Code needs to necessarily create its own guidelines, but perhaps adding suggestions like having SOC 2 highly recommended as a guideline, and using what already exists, is probably the better way to go.

Colin Lambert: And I guess that then also follows the ethos of The Code, which is these are suggestions and recommendations and guidelines.

Eugene Markman: Exactly. And I think it doesn’t change how the industry generally operates. It’s already seen as best practices, but here’s just another instance of a document that outlines best practices that the industry wants to follow and the industry cosigns as best practices. So I don’t see a downside to doing that. I think that actually would be quite great.
One more topic, an interesting panel, but a little different than the majority of the panels that we see that was the Risk & Diversity panel that you had, interesting conversation. The female only panel there. Any key takeaways from that?

Colin Lambert: First of all, I think [00:22:00] it’s, it was great to see a female only panel, actually, because in the past, I have complained publicly about the fact that I will go to explicitly invite for instance, a female or diverse speaker and end up with what we normally end up with, unfortunately, and I’m very sorry to all my fellow, middle-aged white men, that’s what we end up with. So it was good actually, we could actually promote the fact that we can get diversity on the panels. So we’ve tried for many, many years. It’s not always the easiest thing to do.
What I’ve really struck me about that panel was, yes, they were four senior ladies in the industry. They were actually expressing opinions that I would have expected male speakers earlier in the session, early in the conference to have opined. They actually turned around and said, we need to remember there is a problem here around risk. What I thought was fascinating was how they saw the need to embrace the concept of risk, whereas everybody else is more about, okay, build a business and manage the risk.
They were actually more about embracing the risk, which I guess may be part of the challenge they had. It was interesting to hear their challenges coming into the industry [00:23:00] and growing in the industry, and maybe that’s bred this more engagement with risk. But I thought that was really fascinating and they seemed to, [be] less willing to dismiss industry concerns around, for instance, security around data and so on. So to me, it was a very, very refreshing session. A) because it’s nice to have a different look and a different voice on the panels. But actually the big thing for me was how impressive they were in actually discussing issues that I am raising issues that I thought were important. But as a moderator, sometimes it’s hard to get other people to actually discuss.

Eugene Markman: It was interesting, not on the technology side, but Credit Suisse, in the majority of my bosses were women. So not surprising on that front. I think the biggest surprise that they said was, and a few of them said that, they never thought about it that way, that they were women there.
It’s only the people pointed it out to them. To them, they just thought that they were doing their job and then they were the best at doing their job. And I think that kind of showed, right? Because They were bringing up the topics like the risk topic and others that we agree with.
So definitely an [00:24:00] interesting panel, different take.

Colin Lambert: I did, when we were planning the panel, we worked with ACI and they have a committee now aimed at diversity. And I, we worked with them closely and I said, I’m interested in the journey, but I really want, because we’ve got there’s such good speakers, I really want to get their take on the big industry issues as well.
You know, it doesn’t have to be on a liquidity panel, but it’s just what they think is actually really important at this moment in time. And I think to your point around how comfortable and how they just assumed that this is the norm is probably a testament to their institutions, [to] have been inclusive. I can say in the 1980s, I had three females on a spot desk of seven.
And I saw that as being vital because it just took some of the testosterone levels down on the spot desk, which was quite important.

Eugene Markman: The one thing for diversity is that you need to bring other ideas. If everybody, if you have group think and everybody thinks about the world or technology or anything in the same way, you don’t get to explore all options.
Right? You don’t get to evaluate all risks. There are things that kind of sit in the blind spot. You don’t focus on it. So you [00:25:00] really need to. And taking, at the same time, taking a risk on various people to see if they succeed at roles is also important. Because if you have a norm, you might think that somebody’s outside that norm.
They might not fit in. They might not work well in this role, right? That’s risk within itself.

Colin Lambert: To me, that panel was testament to the fact that you can be gender orientation neutral. You should be, because I thought their views were probably some of the best expressed in the whole day with all respect to our other speakers who, you know, did a great job and spoke about their specialities. I thought that was the panel that gave us a really good big picture.

Eugene Markman: I completely agree. Thanks, Colin. I think these were the biggest topics that I took away from the event. Like I said before, I thought the event was wonderful.
Let me give it back to Ali.

Ali Curi: Great, gentlemen. That was an amazing wrap up.
Eugene, what are your closing thoughts? What’s your overall take on the conference? And is there maybe something you’d like to see included in future events? By the way, this could be great feedback for Colin.

Eugene Markman: I’ll start by saying, exactly what I said in the beginning, right? I think it’s important for us [00:26:00] in the industry, in the FX industry, to have events that are really driven by the insiders of the industry.
So we could discuss what’s important to us rather than outsiders allowing us to discuss what’s not. One thing that I really liked from this event, and then I’ll recommend to others is there aren’t that many discussions. There are not many panels that are very technology specific. Now, of course, I come from the FinTech side. To me, technology is important. So the opportunity to go out and discuss it and discuss where technology is going is fantastic, right? So it’s an absolute pleasure to be able to join and have a conversation on that topic.

Ali Curi: Eugene, you’re a regular on the podcast, but for our new listeners, can you briefly share with us your background and your role at ION?

Eugene Markman: I’ve been a part of ION since 2019 when we were acquired. I was at Market Factory at the time. Before that, before Market Factory, I was at Credit Suisse for about 10 years working at REITS products. Currently I’m the COO for the FX business, and we’re trying to grow that business out as much as we can here at ION.

Ali Curi: Thanks, Eugene. And Colin, what are your closing thoughts and [00:27:00] what’s your overall take on the conference? And maybe something you would consider adding for next year’s event. Maybe we’ll even get an exclusive scoop here.

Colin Lambert: The problem with exclusive scoops, Ali, is that unfortunately, other people will suddenly go, “Oh, that’s a really good idea” and get it done before us.
I think from my point of view, what the event in Copenhagen achieved was what we set out to do, and that was to get authoritative, insightful voices on the panel, rather than you sometimes get at events I’ve been to, where people just talk about their business and what they do, and it does inevitably evolve into a sales pitch.
What we had there, we have people like Eugene, who is there just to talk about the issues. And talk about what there’s the problems they’re solving. I think that was probably the bit I was most proud of that throughout the whole day, we actually managed to keep problem solving rather than just drifting off into other discussions.
In terms of what we would add next year, we’re definitely going to evolve the technology. I’m trying to come up with a snappy title. So [00:28:00] if anybody has a good idea for a snappy title, reach out to me because I’d like to actually sort of have it as an ongoing theme through all of our events going forward around a key topic “where is the underlying technology evolving to?” So very forward thinking. Let’s maybe get a few people out, let’s have a few ideas about how, where technology could next change things rather than what is changing at this moment in time, but I definitely think, and that’s where we need the insight from people like Eugene.
I guess the other thing I would say is something I’m working on, been working on for some time, and hopefully this will not be taken before I, we would get to do it, is I really like the idea of next generation panels, at our events. And I’m thinking of we had a diversity panel, we want to maintain that concept hopefully throughout the whole day, but I’m actually thinking I need a panel with nobody over the age of 30 on it just to get rid of the old fogey, like me, just nobody over the age of 30 and actually, “Well, come on in kids, tell us what you think.”

Eugene Markman: Yeah, that’d be fascinating. I am truly curious. I don’t know what the next [00:29:00] generation is thinking. And it is interesting to start thinking about who is going to replace us, right? Yeah, there’s a lot of people in the industry do move towards the end of their careers. Who do we pass the baton?

Colin Lambert: Yeah, and I think it’s the challenges and also a message for all of the institutions out there.
All of our events are under Chatham House Rules, so they’re not going to be quoted because sometimes you get the challenge, “Oh, I’m not sure they’re ready for a panel.” I can guarantee you most of them are. They’re very smart people and they are the future of our industry and our business. So I’d love to get that as a theme working throughout all of our events, as well. So there’s your scoop, Ali. We’re going young.

Ali Curi: Well, thank you, Colin. And thanks again for joining me today, for joining us today and sharing your thoughts. Eugene Markman, I look forward to seeing you again.

Eugene Markman: Thanks, Ali.

Ali Curi: And Colin Lambert, thanks again for joining us. And I hope you visit us again.

Colin Lambert: Yep. That’d be great, Ali, thank you. And thank you, Eugene. Great to talk to you as always.
And that’s our episode for today. You can follow ION Markets on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you for joining us.
I’m Ali Curi. Until next [00:30:00] time.