Numerous innovative SaaS platforms have emerged in recent years due to rapid tech AI advancements across industries. Fintech is one of the major sectors leveraging AI through SaaS, revolutionizing various elements of financial services—from lending and payments to risk management and customer experience.
One of The Most Trusted Financial Service Providers of 2024, IVM Markets, is one such platform transforming the structured products landscape, delivering products that empower financial distributors like brokers, private banks, and asset managers—optimizing investment ideas and generating tailored solutions for their clients.
Diving Deeper Into IVM Markets
Founded by former Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch executives, including cofounder Volodymyr Gubskyi and cofounder Ildar Farkhshatov (CTO), IVM Markets enables quick, data-driven ideation, enhancing investment personalization, and optimizing thousands of variations in seconds. The company is led by an autonomous, robust, and scalable leadership and operating team—driving growth and efficiently managing day-to-day operations.
The Initial Struggles
In the beginning, IVM Markets struggled with targeting smaller wealth managers due to each advisor’s low transaction volumes, which also made scalability a challenge. To resolve this problem, IVM pivoted to target a network of around 200,000 larger institutional distributors, uncovering a powerful network effect.
With this new approach, smaller buyers could access a wider range of optimized investment ideas through larger distributors, creating a collaborative ecosystem that drove significant growth and value for all participants.
AI-Driven Growth
The integration of AI was the game-changer, triggering IVM Markets’s growth and reducing risk. The AI-powered stock curation feature further enhanced the platform’s appeal by curating relevant stocks based on thematic criteria and conducting thorough research—including analyst consensus and negative news checks.
This powerful combination of AI-driven optimization and stock curation significantly improved user decision-making associated with smaller wealth managers, and accelerated client onboarding—driving substantial growth for IVM.
Sustained Success
By leveraging AI, IVM Markets empowers sales professionals to attract new clients and deepen existing relationships. The platform’s ability to uncover high-yield and simultaneously high protection product concepts has significantly boosted sales productivity and driven a surge in traded volumes of structured products.
IVM Markets’ user-friendly interface has particularly resonated with smaller wealth managers, fostering a mutually beneficial network between 200,000 platform sellers and 1 million buyers—primarily consisting of smaller wealth managers. IVM Markets is expected to grow significantly due to the network effect. This means that as more people use their platform, it becomes more valuable to others. Potentially, this growth could lead to a major change in how the financial system works.
Products and Services—Higher Reward, Lower Risk
IVM Markets offers AI-powered thematic stock and index curation, followed by the ability to optimize the basket of stocks together with the protection maturity and autocall levels. This means that people who want to invest in specific financial products can now find the ones that offer the best returns and are less risky during market downturns.
IVM does not compete with the other parts of the value chain. The company’s vision for the market is to power the “what do I want to buy” part of the structured product chain. Additionally, it wants to synergize with multi-issuer platforms that solve the part of “how to buy that final idea electronically and get the best price” and with lifecycle providers to solve the issue of “what do I want to buy to roll/re-invest my trade.”
A One-click Experience
IVM’s AI-powered search and recommendation engine can create an improved quality idea flow for all the players in the structured product value chain. This idea flow then transfers from the advisors to their marketplaces, brokers, asset managers, and private banks to the issuer banks that manufacture the structured products— resulting in more deals for everyone.
Working actively to integrate more functionality into the trading front-ends of multi-issuer platforms, IVM enables the seamless transfer of optimized investment selections directly to clients’ preferred platforms. Advisors can leverage IVM’s AI-powered dashboard, especially those who typically do not want to use the software. With AI, these individuals can learn from the real-life user activity of power users—providing a one-click experience.
This seamless experience is executed by IVM by learning from numerous user-generated iterations across thematic baskets, maturities, and protection levels. By understanding the needs of the buyers and their research process, the AI identifies the most promising investment opportunities in a dashboard for advisors.
What Makes IVM Unique?
IVM’s success is fueled by a highly experienced and autonomous management team. The product is led by co-founder and CTO Ildar Farkhsahtov, who brings over a decade of expertise in derivatives trading and quantitative approaches, the team boasts a wealth of knowledge in finance and technology. Justin Sangster, the Commercial Director, leads the GTM effort and contributes his over 10 years of experience in B2B SaaS, particularly in data-driven decision-making. Nadia Kozyreva, the Chief Operating Officer, lends her nearly 20 years of expertise in operational risks, compliance, and management.
Together with a team of approximately 20 professionals from diverse backgrounds, including investment banks, software companies, and independent financial firms, IVM has cultivated a self-scaling entity. This capable team is adept at hiring and integrating new talent to support the company’s continued growth.
Staying Ahead of the Competition
In the technology world, staying ahead is essential for survival. Companies like Nokia and Yahoo fell behind due to their failure to adapt to changing trends. On the other hand, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have maintained their dominance by constantly innovating and anticipating market needs.
For pure SaaS companies, innovation must be a core value. This means continuously improving products, exploring new features, and embracing technologies like AI. A strong and agile management team is also crucial for navigating the complex tech landscape.
