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Next Gate Tech and Google Cloud: A game-changer in fund industry tech!

Next Gate Tech harnesses the robust, scalable, cutting-edge suite of managed services and highly secure infrastructure provided by Google Cloud.

Published on 24th of November 2023

LDL
Lucas de Lara

This is an extract of the original article from Google

To prioritize business innovation and deliver a solution that meets the rigorous demands of the financial industry, Next Gate Tech harnesses the robust, scalable, cutting-edge suite of managed services and highly secure infrastructure provided by Google Cloud.

Next Gate Tech, a fintech firm operating in the fund and asset management industry, was founded in 2019 by investment specialists Semin Ibisevic and Davide Martucci. With headquarters in Luxembourg and, more recently, a presence in London, the company offers a cutting-edge SaaS platform that leverages proprietary machine-learning models for advanced data analytics and intelligent data management. At its core, this innovative platform prioritizes data quality - a fundamental requirement for obtaining precise and pertinent insights. In an industry marked by an increasing number of directives emphasizing transparency and accountability, Next Gate Tech's solution digitizes and automates processes, eliminating error-prone and repetitive manual tasks. This not only enhances compliance but also enables anomaly detection and strengthens overall control.

Semin Ibisevic, CTO and Co-founder of Next Gate Tech, explains the context further, "The fund industry can typically be distinguished between the front office, which is responsible for making investment decisions, conducting research, and trading, and the middle/back office, which manages operations, performs NAV calculations, and ensures regulatory compliance. During our tenure in the financial sector, we recognized the inherent complexity of these operations and the existing technological gap between the front office and the middle/back office. While the former embraces advanced technology, the latter often relies heavily on manual processes and legacy technology. Our platform is designed to harmonize data, bridging this technological gap, thereby enabling our clients to achieve superior performance and cost savings."

Unleashing innovation with Google Cloud

"Many of our clients, including major banks, are grappling with outdated technology," emphasizes Semin Ibisevic. "They possess vast datasets, but these are often trapped within legacy systems. In our experience, the foundation of effective analysis lies in the quality of the underlying data." Focused on this core principle, Next Gate Tech committed to delivering the needed quality by aggregating, cleaning, harmonizing, and standardizing data into a unified format first. This data is then further enriched with additional financial insights. With this robust and dependable foundation, the platform is able to unleash its full potential, leveraging intelligent analytics driven by machine learning models. The suite of services includes Net Asset Value (NAV) monitoring, risk assessment, portfolio manager oversight, and comprehensive Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) analysis. In total, Next Gate Tech offers solutions for more than 36 distinct use cases.

It's crucial to highlight that from its inception, Next Gate Tech chose to harness the capabilities of the cloud to ensure scalability and enable a relentless focus on innovation. "We possessed the industry expertise and a visionary concept; Google Cloud's reliability and extensive suite of services took care of the rest," remarks Next Gate Tech's CTO. He continues, "While there are notable general-purpose solutions available for data preparation and analysis, none are tailored specifically to the intricacies of the fund and asset management sector. What sets our platform apart is its development by industry experts, for industry experts. It operates on a secure infrastructure offering a comprehensive array of managed services, expediting rapid development and sparing us from spending time with technical maintenance or issues that add no real value to our platform or our clients."

Harnessing Google Cloud's Innovation

From the robust Google Workspace productivity suite to the unified Google Data Cloud platform, and not to mention the powerful Google Security Command Center, Next Gate Tech is tapping into the extensive spectrum of Google Cloud services. According to Semin Ibisevic, "This is one of the paramount strengths of Google Cloud. With other providers, integrating third-party solutions can be a complex task. However, Google Cloud offers an integrated, all-encompassing infrastructure that effectively addresses the majority of finance-specific regulatory requirements, and it even includes options for hybrid and multi cloud environments. The system is highly automated, equipped with cutting-edge services that provide invaluable support to smaller operators—such as ourselves—venturing into the development of solutions that meet the high standards of our industry. The results of audits conducted by external providers and some of our clients serve as tangible evidence. In general, our audit outcomes surpass industry averages, and much of this success can be attributed to our partnership with Google Cloud."

In less than four years, this Luxembourg-based startup has evolved into an exemplar in its domain, continuously attracting high-profile clients. Leveraging BigQuery and applied machine learning models, the company handles an average of 5 petabytes of data each month.

With a commitment to pushing boundaries further and enhancing offerings for clients, Next Gate Tech intends to continue harnessing the innovation potential of Google Cloud. Of particular interest are the diverse (pre-trained) models offered by Vertex AI. "The breadth of the Vertex AI Model Garden is simply astounding. Many of these models have the potential to enhance our solutions. In fact, we have already applied models that are running in production, and we have plans to expand it further as part of our ongoing projects in the realm of generative AI," reveals Next Gate Tech's CTO.

A strategic partner for sustainable growth

An essential factor to note is that, before selecting Google Cloud, Next Gate Tech conducted a comprehensive comparative study, with particular attention to the billing aspect, which should not be underestimated. For the startup, the cost of cloud services holds strategic significance as the cost model that is heavily consumption driven, in one way or another, translates into benefits for their clients.

"Google Cloud empowers us with exceptional competitiveness in our market, primarily because pricing aligns with our expansion. Specifically, Google provides an extensive suite of consumption-driven services, thereby avoiding fixed costs and thus imposing paying for them whether they’re utilized or not. With the majority of Google Cloud services, you only pay for what you genuinely use," emphasizes Semin Ibisevic. In essence, "Google Cloud transcends mere technical infrastructure; it embodies a mindset, a work ethos, an unparalleled innovation capacity—especially in the AI domain. Moreover, it offers a remarkable level of security and compliance that instills confidence in our clients and contributes to the prosperity of our platform. In summary, Google Cloud has enabled us to surmount the stringent regulatory and technical challenges of the financial sector, transforming our vision into a tangible reality, and positioning us among the industry's major players."

👉 Read the full article by Google