Conference Dailys FILS in Philly Today 2019 - Wrap-up | Page 10

FILS IN PHILLY
in-depth
THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF
FIXED INCOME LEADERS SUMMIT 2019
Artificial intelligence and talent
management to drive the
evolution of buy-side strategies
BLACKROCK’S SUPURNA VEDBRAT ALSO HIGHLIGHTED THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE TRADER AS THE FIXED INCOME
ECOSYSTEM EVOLVES.
S
upurna VedBrat, global head of trading at
BlackRock, identified the emergence of data
science and artificial intelligence (AI) as key
elements to the next phase of buy-side trading
operations for fixed income.
Speaking to Billy Hult, president of Tradeweb,
as part of a fireside chat, VedBrat opined that
due to the changing nature of the fixed income
ecosystem, these differentiators would only
grow in importance in the near future.
“Data science and AI gives us the ability to tru-
ly augment human intelligence with computing
computer, and you are able to do that at scale,”
said VedBrat. “I think it is going to materially
change trading strategies that the buy-side uses
and even on the sell-side.”
“You don’t need human intelligence to pick
trades, so you can automate a lot of that flow
and the trader is now much more of a risk man-
ager overseeing that the market the working the
way we expect, and if not, they have the ability
to step in and correct it.”
VedBrat also touched on the proliferation of
data, which she believes will soon result in clean
data sets available to firms from the cloud that
will significantly increase computing power to
ultimately improve trading and investment
decision-making, in a similar manner to trends
already occurring int the equities space.
Considering how the evolution of the trader
skill set may also play out, VedBret underlined
the importance of proper talent management,
particularly as changes to the fixed income
ecosystem occur, such as the growth of ex-
change-traded funds and portfolio trading.
“I like having teams with diversity of thought
and that comes in many different ways; people
with different regional experiences, people who
are representing different age groups, because
that is the way we are going to be able to keep
solving in an agile manner,” she said.
Considering how such teams can be deployed,
VedBrat said that the traditional pyramid model
did not necessarily result in the best ideas for
firms, and that creating an environment focused
on agility and innovation is better suited to an
efficient and rewarding ideas process.
“It’s important that your passion, your pur-
pose, is aligned with what the firm’s purpose is,
because that is what is going to make a much
better working environment. At BlackRock we
want to give people multiple different experienc-
es; it is there to take, we create the opportunity
and they need to grab it.”
“You don’t need human intelligence to pick trades, so you can automate a lot of that
flow and the trader is now much more of a risk manager overseeing that the market the
working the way we expect, and if not, they have the ability to step in and correct it.”
SUPURNA VEDBRAT, BLACKROCK
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FILS IN PHILLY DAILY