API’s and Toolkits for the Next Generation of Digital Investing

by Dan Raju, CEO and Co-Founder

One single word that defines everything we do at Tradier is “Enablement”. Our products and services are meant to enable innovative investing experiences. Firms and developers can focus on investors, value creation and growth rather than complexities in technology, infrastructure, regulation and data. The following are some of the thoughts that drive our product strategies at Tradier. 

1.      Totally Self-Directed and Self-Service: Online Investors demand the ability to work on a “totally digital” end-to-end online experience. Tradier API’s enable an online experience from platforms where investors can digitally onboard, fund and invest through platforms powered by the Tradier API.

2.      Mobile: By the end of 2020, Mobile will be the primary investing experience including Trading. The very definition of online experiences will be primarily associated with Mobile rather than with a browser on a desktop. The Tradier API’s have been built to scale and optimized for mobile and all major browsers.

3.      User Experience is everything: Online investors react with loyalty to experiences that are simple, intuitive and most importantly convenient. Developers and designers can build totally embeddable and customizable user experiences on the Tradier API’s where they get custody, execution, and data all in one “Brokerage in a Box”.

4.      Beyond an App or Website:  Investors look at apps and websites as services and want these platforms to participate in their overall day-to-day. The API’s must support the distribution of functionality outside the application including IOT, Social, Messaging and voice. Experiences that drive these kinds of behaviors drive enhanced engagement and loyalty.

5.      Data-Driven Personalization: Consumers want to configure their experience in ways that meet their needs. Data-driven personalization will become a huge trend. Consumers rely on platforms to automatically configure their platforms based on their usage. The Tradier engine stores a lot of critical, real-time and historical user data that can help create these experiences.

6.      Unbundling of Legacy Brokers is in full swing: What legacy brokers and banks offered for decades is now being replaced by more agile, nimble and experience-centric platforms. Retail investors are willing to migrate to the newer platforms serving specific and broad needs. Consumers subscribe to ‘Best of Breed Services” than one large legacy provider that offers a large list of sub-optimal experiences under one roof. The Tradier engine today powers over a hundred platforms and is enabling Unbundling of Legacy brokers.

7.      Next Generation Financial Products: We expect to see large implementations of investing taking the shape of a “Critical Capability” within large non-brokerage ecosystems. We expect to see large fintech ecosystems like P2P Lending, Ride-Share Firms, Personal Finance Apps, Small & Midsize Banks, POE Small Business Insurance providers, and others trying to offer investing capabilities to their consumer bases. Early offerings in this direction will attract a large number of consumers. Many of these large firms with ecosystems look at Brokerage to monetize its base (in addition to making their platforms sticky). The Tradier API’s can empower this generation of investing products.

8.      International Offerings: The US markets and particularly US brands have always been associated with lives of consumers globally. We expect a large influx product from existing financial firms and new startups to offer the capability for consumers globally to invest in the US markets. The Tradier API’s have been built to support an international investor including Know Your Customer (KYC).

9.      Convergence: Self Directed Equity Trading and Online Robo-Advisory Services that offer a self-directed experience to invest in Model portfolios will be more looked at as similar functionality. This will result in Online Equity Trading Platforms offering Model Portfolios and Digital Advisors offering direct stock purchase capabilities. Using the Tradier API’s you can build a Trading platform and a digital advisor into one seamless experience.

10.  Subscriptions: We expect to see investing platforms offering fixed monthly subscription-based pricing models. Tradier offers rich set of simple pricing options that can enable firms to offer subscription-based investing products.

11.  Abstraction: Users must be completely abstracted from Market Complexities as much as possible. They should not be distracted during their experience with Market Complexity. The Tradier API’s have been built to be compliant and provide the required abstractions from Brokerage, Clearing, Market Data, Regulatory, legacy infrastructure, and routing complexities.