Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
In this episode of WealthTech Today, host Craig Iskowitz sits down with Bob Santella, CEO of BetaNXT, to discuss the company’s innovative approach to data modernization and their vision for the future of connected wealth.
Episode Highlights
Bob Santella brings over three decades of experience in financial and capital markets to his role as the new CEO of BetaNXT.
BetaNXT Overview
- Focus on wealth management transformation through data modernization
- Vision of “connected wealth” – seamlessly connecting clients, providers, and systems
- Strong emphasis on long-term client partnerships and collaborative innovation
Key Industry Trends from 2024
- Growing demand for personalized digital experiences with real-time data
- Younger investors driving change in service expectations
- Increased focus on data transparency across international and alternative markets
DataXchange Platform
- New DataXChange platform launched in partnership with Snowflake
- Agnostic, open-architecture design
- Supports integration of multiple data sources
- Real-time data access and automation capabilities
- Already adopted by multiple pilot users
AI-Driven Corporate Actions Processing
- Revolutionary automation of traditionally manual processes
- AI-powered data scraping through millions of documents
- Significant reduction in processing time from months to minutes/hours
- Enhanced accuracy and efficiency in managing corporate actions
- Modernizing Corporate Actions Processing: Enhancing Efficiency and Accuracy
Tax Solutions and Innovation
- Implementation of predictive analytics
- New advisor attrition risk scoring system with 90% confidence level
- Tax optimization scoring for investment portfolios
- Enhanced tax reporting capabilities
- Maxit Tax Scoring
2025 Strategic Priorities
- Major investment in Ops Workbench – new cloud-based operational platform
- Modernization of core clearing platform
- Expansion of tax reporting coverage across all states and entity types
- Focus on real-time reporting capabilities
Sponsor
This episode is sponsored by the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation.
WealthTech Today features interviews, news, and analysis on the trends and best practices in Wealth Management Technology. Hosted by Craig Iskowitz, founder of Ezra Group Consulting.
My guest for this episode was Bob Santella, CEO of BetaNXT. Here’s Bob’s bio:
- Bob Santella has an extensive background in the financial and capital markets, with a career spanning over three decades. He has a deep history in the trading technology space, as well as a strong focus on Data Science and Technology Operations.
- Most recently, Bob was CEO of IPC systems, a provider of secure, compliant communications and multi cloud connectivity solutions for the financial markets. His tenure at IPC was marked by a focus on technological transformations, including software and SaaS transitions while growing revenue and increasing profitability.
- Bob began his career at Price Waterhouse Coopers, spending eight years in a senior leadership role within the Personal Financial Planning Unit. He later served as Chief Operating Officer and President at Fox River execution, which was later acquired by Sungard.
- While at Sungard, Bob was eventually promoted to President of its global trading division, leading all trading software, data regulated entities and services. Following Sungard’s acquisition by FIS in 2015 he continued in his role as a division president with the an expanded remit of products and solutions.
- Bob’s diverse background and collaborative approach have been instrumental in developing high performing teams and leading business through significant technological advancements.
Now, before we go, let’s take care of a couple quick housekeeping tasks.
- Please subscribe to this show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don’t miss an episode.
- Check out our sponsor, the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation at investinothers.org
And now let’s kick this thing off!
Episode Transcript
- Introduction and Company Overview
- BetaNXT’s Vision for Connected Wealth
- Data Exchange Platform and Modernization
- AI-Driven Corporate Actions Processing
- Tax Solutions and Predictive Analytics
- Looking Ahead: Strategic Priorities for 2025
Introduction and Company Overview
Craig Iskowitz: Let’s have our next guest. I’m excited to introduce Bob Santella, CEO of BetaNXT. Hey Bob, welcome.
Bob Santella: Great pleasure to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to chat to you, your listeners.
Craig Iskowitz: Thanks for getting on here. I know you were really super busy over at BetaNXT as the new CEO. But before we jump over, where are you calling in from?
Bob Santella: Right now I’m calling from Southern Manhattan, the financial district, really the heart of our industry on a very cold day right here in Southern Manhattan.
Craig Iskowitz: Man, I’m feeling it. I’m in New Jersey, just a couple of miles from you. We’re here stuck in the frozen tundra. But I’m sure this will end at some point. So we can warm ourselves with this wonderful conversation about BetaNXT and the things you guys are doing. But if you could share with our audience, give us a 30 second elevator pitch for BetaNXT.
Bob Santella: BetaNXT really formed with a vision to bring together wealth management transformation with a focus on data modernization and technology transformation strategies that bring together what we call connected wealth. What connected wealth means is exactly that – it connects clients to their providers, it connects providers to us, it brings together multiple systems into an integrated platform that really provides a seamless experience for our customers and ultimately their end customers.
BetaNXT’s Vision for Connected Wealth
Craig Iskowitz: I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want a seamless experience in connectivity. It’s something we’re constantly beating the drum on here at Ezra Group, so I’m all about it. Let’s talk about your role. So you’ve been in the industry for quite some time, and you’ve just come on as the CEO of BetaNXT six months ago. What is it like? What are your initial observations? What have you learned in this first six months at this new company?
Bob Santella: A couple things stand out. Some are new, some reinforce things I already know. One is that BetaNXT in particular has really strong partnerships with our clients. We’ve worked with most of our clients for decades. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.
It really truly defines the word partnership in many ways, which that collaboration between what we do and our partner slash clients do, that’s a large part of how we innovate. It really is a very collaborative experience how we get feedback from them and industry which drives us to innovate more. It’s an iterative process and something I think that really kind of is a hallmark of the company.
Secondly, we listen to our clients and we hear from our clients and they hear from their clients. Their clients want a better experience – specifically defined as seamless experience, a holistic experience, integrated experience that brings together real-time data, analytics.
DataXchange Platform and Data Modernization
Craig Iskowitz: Looking back at 2024, which we just closed the books on, what are some of the industry trends you have seen that you think are most impactful for the industry?
Bob Santella: There’s several that stand out. One that 2024 really highlighted was that with our clients and the younger generation that are now investing, they expect a much more personalized digital experience with near real-time data and insights. People of our generation probably weren’t quite in tune with things like real-time data or digital. The younger generation wants that personalized digital experience, they’re demanding it from the industry.
We’re seeing a much higher and cleaner focus on data because people want to be able to use this data in ways they haven’t used it in the past. What that means specifically is taking data real time that gives them transparency into markets they weren’t exposed to previously – international markets, alternative asset markets, other type of investments that weren’t common a decade or two ago.
One of the most exciting things that we’re doing is our DataXchange platform, which we launched in partnership with Snowflake. We’re creating a structure and platform that’s streamlining the exchange and control of data, both internal sources and external sources. We’re able to take all this data and bring it to a single platform and put it into the cloud.
Craig Iskowitz: I was pretty excited when I saw that press release because it’s another area that here at Ezra Group we’ve been beating the drum about for our clients and the industry – to own your own data. But one question I had is: is it agnostic? Is it open architecture or is it only for Beta data?
Bob Santella: It’s truly agnostic, truly open architecture. Of course a lot of our clients use the Beta-generated data which comes from the Beta platform, from clearing trades and other activity. But our DataXchange platform is completely agnostic and can integrate any form of data that the client is currently using or wants to use.
From the time we started talking about this to when we launched this middle of last year till now, we already have more than a half dozen clients signed up as pilot users for this platform. It shows there’s huge demand within the industry with our client base to really accelerate the progress on this platform.
AI-Driven Corporate Actions Processing
Craig Iskowitz: Can I then once I have my data into DataXchange, whatever the data set is, whatever the source or framework around that data – can I then automate it? What can I do with that besides just running a report?
Bob Santella: It’s just about completely automated. In the past we talked about file transfer and data transfer. Now we talk about data access. By having it in a real-time data vault in the cloud, it gives our clients, and ultimately their clients, real-time access.
We’re now taking that data and going to clients who all have their own unique use cases. For example with corporate actions – every client has corporate actions to varying degrees. We can now better manage corporate actions in a more automated fashion. The automation and efficiency has increased exponentially compared to the typical manual nature of what we’ve done in the past.
Craig Iskowitz: Don’t jump ahead. That’s my next topic – corporate actions solutions. I really want to talk about that one in a second, but going back to corporate actions, that really reminds me back in a previous life when I worked for a large firm in the industry, dealing with corporate actions was such a nightmare, having to manage them and bring the data in and understand each provider was providing a different format. So that’s a little known area, sort of a backwater, but super important when it comes to managing your portfolios. If your corporate actions processing has got a glitch that could cause some serious performance problems, serious reporting problems, clients will not be happy.
Bob Santella: Yes, we’ve launched actually in conjunction with DataXchange last year and now we’re really in full production with this specific corporate action project. Corporate actions is a super critical process for every firm. It’s behind the scenes whether it be a merger, a company call, a bond, a special dividend payment. These are all types of actions that really have zero margin for error.
Some of the firms you talk about might have dozens of people sometimes just in some back office basement working on the heavy manual process that involved corporate actions that in and of itself created the human error possibility as well as being very time consuming. With AI now we’re able to automate the scraping of data through literally millions of documents, dealing with customer databases, SEC databases, other things where we pull information.
What used to take months of human time now takes minutes or hours of automation. We’ve had rave reviews from our clients on the projects we’ve made in this area. Corporate actions affect every single participant in the marketplace. AI hasn’t made just a little bit of difference here – it’s made a lot of difference in how clients now see the value.
Tax Solutions and Predictive Analytics
Craig Iskowitz: One question I had – if I’ve got an enterprise client and I’ve been pushing to implement a data management solution, but they’re not a BetaNXT client right now, can they still sign up for Data Exchange and get that implemented without being a Beta or a Maxit client?
Bob Santella: Absolutely. Our initial focus has been on our Beta clients since it’s been a fast moving initiative for us – going from concept to development to now fully production in a matter of three to six months. However, we’re already getting inbound inquiries from non-Beta clients.
From an unselfish point of view we want to be the data expert in the industry. From a selfish point of view, we want to expand our capabilities beyond Data Exchange to new clients, new logos. Data Exchange is one way we’re doing that.
Craig Iskowitz: Fantastic. Alright, so now I want to roll back to what you mentioned, the tax-driven solutions. Can you explain more about that? When it comes to tax driven, how is AI driving that and what could clients see differently now and how would that improve the way they’re doing attacks with their clients, having this AI driven solution from BetaNXT?
Bob Santella: Yeah, I jumped ahead earlier because I’m really passionate about this. Tax is one of those things that really adds value to the client experience because it can save you money. It can help you make better investment decisions. It gives you a perspective on how to evaluate your portfolio through a different prism.
What’s more exciting is what we’re doing with a couple partnerships with people with really strong AI engines. We’re taking our tax data and providing what we call predictive analytics. There are two areas in particular we’re using this data that our clients really find intriguing and exciting.
One is we’re able to give our financial advisory clients a better sense of what attrition they may have within their financial advisory base. Using our tax data and regression analysis with AI, we think with over 90% confidence level we can give them a score of whether attrition risk might exist as far as losing advisors.
On the tax-specific area of AI, we’re able to generate what we call a tax-score, or tax-optimization-type metric, which takes the tax data and not just reports it, but gives you a better idea of where you stand from a tax-optimization point of view with your investment portfolio.
Looking Ahead: Strategic Priorities for 2025
Craig Iskowitz: So what’s coming in 2025? What’s some innovation or some ideas within the roadmap that BetaNXT clients can expect to see this year?
Bob Santella: A couple of things. Some things aren’t always so apparent but are super critical to our clients. On our main platform for clearing, the old Beta platform that comprises our largest BetaNXT business, we’re now actually spending a lot of money and time on upgrading our core platform for operations.
We’ve made a multi-million dollar investment in what we call Ops Workbench – a modular cloud-based way for our clients and operations level to much more quickly and accurately access the operation functions needed within the firm. Whether it be corporate actions, trade activity, dividends and so forth, we’re moving away from the green screens and old operation systems to a modern platform.
In our tax division, we’re expanding to make sure we have coverage for every reporting requirement in every state, not just federal, and for every type of entity. We want to be able to serve every reporting need that our clients have, both from generic reporting and quicker, more real-time fashion.
Craig Iskowitz: Fantastic Bob. You said it all. Thanks so much.
Bob Santella: Craig, I appreciate the time from you and your listeners and I want to congratulate you on your success and everything you’ve done throughout your career.
Craig Iskowitz: Hey, I’ll take that. Thanks, Bob.
