Fees | Bharat Malesha, SmartStream | VOX 66

One of the biggest costs incurred by sell-side firms is for trading: brokerage, exchange and clearing fees and expenses.

Bharat Malesha is executive vice president at SmartStream Technologies responsible for helping banks understand and optimize these costs. He speaks with Jame DiBiasio about the upward trend in costs, and the way that automation is giving COOs and CFOs more visibility and control.

Malesha also discusses the working culture of financial institutions around the world, in both developed and emerging markets, and how technology and digitalization is reshaping how they operate.

SmartStream sponsored this episode.

• Timecodes:
• 0:00 – Bharat Malesha, SmartStream
• 1:04 – The rising cost of fees for brokerage, exchange and clearing
• 3:35 – How firms have changed their approach to managing costs
• 7:37 – Optimizing across asset class, marketplace, and volumes
• 10:11 – Unbundling research from execution
• 11:34 – The evolving use of technology to gain visibility over P&L
• 15:09 – Emerging markets versus developed
• 16:16 – How COOs and CFOs make use of information
• 17:09 – SmartStream’s challenges in working with complex clients
• 20:42 – Integrating cost optimization to respond to big trends such as Libor’s transformation or a market going to T+1 settlement
• 23:15 – What’s next for technology and digitalization