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Innovating Financial Services!
Advancements in cloud technology have revolutionized the way financial institutions operate, from launching new trading strategies faster to powering more granular risk management and streamlining operational efficiency. As the industry increasingly leverages AWS’s services to manage all aspects of the trade lifecycle, the cloud has become essential in enabling institutions to modernize their systems and innovate continuously. This shift has opened new opportunities for firms to enhance their competitiveness and more rapidly adapt to the fast-paced nature of global finance.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has established itself as the leader in the cloud services industry, supporting a diverse range of customers in the financial services sector as well as across a number of other industry verticals. AWS’s Capital Markets Industry Specialist team collaborates with exchanges, clearing houses, investment banks, asset managers, broker-dealers, and fintech firms to help them innovate and modernize their operations. By focusing on customer-centric solutions, AWS has enabled numerous financial institutions to migrate and operate critical workloads in the cloud, enhancing their capabilities and nurturing innovation.
Alex Mirarchi, Principal Industry Specialist for Capital Markets in AWS’s Financial Services Industry Business Unit, brings a wealth of experience to his role. After a successful career in Sales and Trading in London and New York, Alex pivoted to cloud services. At AWS, Alex combines his twin passions for capital markets and technology and leads AWS’s market development for Global Exchanges and Financial Market Infrastructure firms, as well as trading and connectivity in the cloud.
Let’s explore Alex’s inventive leadership in capital markets:
From Trading Floor to Cloud Services
Alex’s path to AWS started with HSBC Global Asset Management in London after his junior year of college. As a Music and English double major, the world of finance was new to him, but he found the interplay between information, liquidity, human psychology, and asset prices fascinating.
After graduating from college, he returned to London with HSBC and worked in their global banking and markets division. There, he spent the first few years of his career on HSBC’s trading floor, selling Asian Equities to hedge funds. It was a very interesting place to be immediately after the financial crisis, especially for someone for whom both the industry and Asia were relatively new.
After HSBC, Alex moved back to New York and took a similar role at Macquarie Group, where he focused on growing Macquarie’s pan-Asian Equity market share with hedge funds in the United States.
While he loved the dynamism of the trading floor, Alex was becoming increasingly interested in technology. During his time covering emerging markets, he saw how electronification was changing price discovery and risk management and how it was opening these markets up to new quantitative and algorithmic strategies. Due to technological advancements, the whole industry was shifting rapidly. Even the way people interacted with one another and the markets were reshaped by technology. Early in his career in 2011, Alex primarily communicated with clients over the phone to share investment ideas. By 2017, most interactions were primarily happening in electronic communication networks, like Bloomberg Chat, allowing real-time sharing of trade information, analyses, research charts, and data.
After six years on the trading floor, he decided to further his education and pursued an MBA at Columbia Business School. Upon graduating, Alex started his career in technology and went to San Francisco to work for Oracle in their Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) division.
At Oracle, Alex worked in Business Development, helping OCI scale by structuring programs and strategic partnerships with independent software vendors (ISVs) across multiple industries.
Oracle had recently launched the second generation of OCI and needed to land customers and grow revenue quickly. As a late entrant to the market, speed and differentiation were critical for Oracle. Alex structured OCI’s ISV program offerings, engagement approaches and sales strategies to drive scalable growth and supported several highly strategic partnership pursuits. Five deals that Alex led business development for were explicitly celebrated by Larry Ellison, Oracle’s Chairman and Founder, and Safra Catz, Oracle’s CEO, on Oracle’s quarterly earnings calls. “Working at OCI was a unique experience,” Alex said. “I helped the business scale and grow exponentially and innovate almost on the fly. It felt like I was almost working at a start-up nestled within a large technology company.”
Navigating the Intersection of Finance and Cloud Technology
Then, in 2021, he saw an opportunity to combine his passion for capital markets and the cloud at AWS. He’s been there ever since, utilizing his financial services and technology expertise to drive innovation and transformation at financial institutions on AWS. In his role, Alex works closely with exchange operators, asset managers, investment banks, broker-dealers, and fintechs to help them develop their cloud strategies and innovate at scale. Alex specifically works to identify new, repeatable opportunities to help customers build with AWS. He identifies, scales and structures global strategies to support AWS sales and support teams.
Recent projects where Alex and AWS have helped customers accelerate their transformation journey include the Johannesburg Stock Exchange modernizing its Broker Dealer Application, Bolsa Institucional de Valores (BIVA) migrating its Disaster Recovery environment, and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Euronext launching their respective real-time market data feeds on AWS.
Embracing AWS for Strategic Development in Capital Markets
While cloud technology is becoming more mainstream, AWS has been pioneering this space for nearly two decades, aiding customers in migrating their most mission-critical workloads to the cloud. AWS’s Capital Markets Industry Specialist team plays a key role in transforming the industry and growing AWS’s presence to assist customers in innovating across the entire trade lifecycle.
At AWS, Amazon’s 16 leadership principles shape everything they do. The company adopts a customer centric approach to its engagements and works backward from the customer, with particular emphasis on three core Amazon Leadership principles: customer obsession, diving deep, and delivering results.
Amazon’s customer-driven approach is central to Alex’s role and the AWS Capital Markets Industry Specialist team’s engagement strategy. This unique approach has led AWS to work with capital markets customers and build transformative solutions, such as a customized edge computing solution for Nasdaq’s North American Markets and supporting the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) in becoming the first Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU) to receive a notice of no objection from the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) to migrate core functions to AWS. Additionally, AWS has partnered with cryptocurrency exchanges and high-frequency trading firms to launch the industry’s first cloud-native colocation environments, utilized by companies like Coinbase and OneTrading.
Innovating for Customers
Alex’s work at AWS places him at the front line of transformation within financial services as he works with customers to use AWS to drive the future of capital markets. Alex begins by understanding the customer’s needs. He then “works backward” with these needs to jointly define success goals. He does this through AWS mechanisms like Executive Visioning Sessions, Executive Briefings, and writing PRFAQ documents. This alignment clarifies the vision and benefits while ensuring specificity and a unified outcome.
He also drives industry-wide innovation by connecting with diverse customers to identify common, scalable themes. After pinpointing a theme or challenge, he collaborates with customers to shape a successful solution for the industry. Internally, he builds the business case, identifies technical requirements, and coordinates with key teams and stakeholders to develop the solution iteratively. Alex’s current focus is on enabling low-latency trading applications to migrate to AWS, addressing tight latency requirements, and utilizing data and technology from various providers. He is working with a range of stakeholders and industry participants on cloud-native proximity trading environments as a potential solution to these challenges.
Supporting Global Customers in Their Cloud Adoption Journey
According to Alex, cloud adoption is strongest for startups and newer entrants in financial services. Because of the cloud’s on-demand pricing, rapid access to scalable resources, and global distribution networks, many capital markets firms, like Robinhood, Coinbase, and AsiaNext, were “born in the cloud.”
Customers from startups to established enterprises all over the world are rapidly adopting and maturing their use of cloud computing and innovating in exciting ways on AWS. Regardless of a customer’s size, location, or cloud adoption stage, Alex’s approach to supporting them in their journey is always the same: working backward from their business goals and aligning the right technical solutions on AWS resources to help them build.
AWS’s culture of working backward from the customer and exceptional customer obsession is noteworthy. A significant 90% of the solutions it develops are driven by customer feedback and needs. The remaining 10% stems from AWS’s proactive approach to understanding customer requirements, even when they are not explicitly stated.
Advice for Aspiring Professionals in the Tech-Finance Intersection
The advice from Alex to aspiring professionals looking to make an impact at the intersection of technology and finance is to focus on customers and solving their needs. He believes, “It’s tough to add value to customers if you don’t first understand their business goals and then identify ways to help solve the challenges they are facing. This requires effort and expertise, as well as a willingness to focus on the things that aren’t working and then unpack them to get to the core of the problem.
Innovation is not always straightforward and can be complicated at times, but keeping the focus on solving customer challenges helps ensure that you are making a difference.” He would also advise, “Be creative. Don’t be afraid to think unconventionally and think big. Complex problems can require creative solutions, so lean into brainstorming and embrace the boldest of ideas you or others might have.”
Another thing he suggests keeping in mind is, “Always look to scale, both the customer challenges you are solving as well as your own network.” Alex is effective in his role because he is part of a high performing team comprised of people with a range of perspectives and backgrounds. Many of the things he has achieved he could not have solved alone. In his opinion, “Earning the trust of colleagues, both on my team and across AWS, and involving them in work is critical to seeing the whole picture, crafting strategies, solving challenges, and unlocking innovation.”
Lastly, he advises aspirants, “Don’t be afraid to reach out to people and learn from them.” He is always happy to chat with people, share his perspectives, and learn from them!