ViewTrade was named Investment Tech of the Year at the Asia Fintech Awards. Afterward, our Chief Growth Officer, Laksh Gangwani, sat down with Fintech Intel to talk about what the award says about where the industry is heading. The conversation covered APIs, build versus buy, global expansion, and the future of settlement.
The Future of Investment Tech | Inside The Ecosystem – EP. 04
Featuring: Laksh Gangwani, Chief Growth Officer, ViewTrade
Host: Alicia Ward, Barker Brooks Communications
Sharing below a few key pointers from the episode:
Technology and infrastructure are not identical
Laksh drew a line that many firms miss. Technology is the front, middle and back-office package. Infrastructure is everything around it and it includes operations, tax services, data licenses and support.
A polished app can look finished while the plumbing behind it is not. When ViewTrade moved from being seen as a broker to being an infrastructure provider, the change took roughly four years, and it reshaped both the company’s technology and how it works with clients.
What a front-to-back API really means
A lot of platforms offer customer-facing APIs. The challenging part is showing the same level of automation to operations, compliance, risk and back-office teams.
For example: A simple request when a customer wants to invest $1,000. The system has to place the order, apply the right pricing, run risk checks, and reflect the result correctly in the customer’s account. Corporate actions follow later. If any step is manual or disconnected, the experience suffers, and so does the firm’s operational cost.
Laksh also shared an example of a prospect whose account setup was configured incorrectly. That one error led to a significant loss for the firm.
Build vs. buy is no longer an either/or choice
Monolithic platforms once forced firms to take everything or nothing. Modular architecture and microservices have changed that. Firms can now pick the capabilities they need or add a layer on top of existing systems where those systems fall short. Laksh was open about ViewTrade’s bias toward buying, but he made a practical case: it gets firms live in months rather than years.
The trade-offs institutions face
Every financial institution has more ideas than budget: new asset classes, new markets, tokenized assets, crypto. In practice, the business that earns the most usually gets the investment, and newer areas can be underfunded until they suddenly matter. Laksh compared this to a plant that stops anything else from growing around it, a pattern that has caught companies in other industries.
Access is solved. Outcomes are the next goal.
ViewTrade supports small-ticket investing as well as large institutional flows. Laksh’s view is that opening up access to markets is not enough on its own. The goal is better outcomes, which depends on things users never see:
- Best-execution routing rather than internalizing small orders
- Payment rails that make sense for small amounts, since a flat wire fee can outweigh a $10 investment
- Risk management and clearing arrangements built for large trades
- Clear coordination with custodians, clearing firms and regulators
What surprises firms expanding globally?
Moving money across borders can cost more than firms expect. FX spreads and wire fees can reduce a monthly transfer before any investing begins. Market structure varies too. Singapore has a single exchange, while the US has many trading venues. Laksh noted that the real operational complexity appears after three to four months, when reporting, corporate actions and delayed payments start affecting customers.
Instant settlement and tokenization: the open questions
Laksh did not dismiss either idea. He asked which problem each one solves. Today’s settlement cycle lets firms to net positions, so only a small share of traded value actually moves in cash. Instant settlement would need new payment rails and would change margin and funding dynamics. Tokenization adds costs for creation, custody and warehousing.
His view: if these changes solve a real problem, the industry should invest fully. If not, the industry should say so before the build begins. He also expects new roles to emerge, such as liquidity-as-a-service providers.
Frequently asked questions
• What is brokerage as a service?
Think about all the things that go into starting a stock trading service. You need the technology, a broker, custody arrangements, clearing, market connectivity and several other services working together. Traditionally, this could mean dealing with five or six different providers.
Brokerage-as-a-Service combines all the above capabilities through a single provider. For banks, brokers, financial technology companies, this means spending less time managing different companies and more time building their investment business.
• Why do APIs matter beyond the customer app?
A trading app may look simple, but there’s a lot happening after someone places an order. The trade needs to go through the appropriate checks, reach an execution venue, be processed and eventually appear correctly in the customer’s account. APIs help connect these different steps.
There is a little benefit in automating the customer-facing application if the operations, compliance and risk teams still handle everything manually.
The real opportunity lies in connecting the process and not only improving what customers see on their screens.
• Is building in-house still an option?
Yes. Some financial institutions have spent years building their systems and replacing them completely may not make business sense. What is changing is that firms now have choices. With APIs and modular technology, firms can keep the systems that work and bring in solutions where firms need additional capabilities. It makes the build-versus-buy decision less rigid than it used to be.
• Why expanding into global investment market is challenging?
Offering access to international stocks may sound straightforward until you look at everything happening behind the scenes. Take an investor in India who wants to buy U.S. stocks. There may be foreign exchange charges, international payment fees, different market rules, and settlement requirements to consider. Even something as routine as processing a corporate action can become complicated when multiple institutions are involved. The challenge isn’t simply providing access to another market. It’s managing everything that comes with it.
• Why are financial institutions moving towards modular technology?
Replacing a technology platform can be expensive, disruptive and difficult to manage, especially when existing systems are tied to years of business processes.
Modular technology gives firms another way forward. A bank might be happy with its existing customer platform. It may need better market connectivity or additional post‑trade capabilities. Instead of rebuilding everything it can look at adding just those services.
It is an approach, for institutions that want to modernise without changing the infrastructure that already works.
The episode was published by Barker Brooks Communications. You can watch the episode on their YouTube channel here.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice. Views expressed are those of the speaker. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Services may vary by jurisdiction and are subject to regulatory approval
