20 The MiFID II RegTech Case: AppsBroker and Project Sentinel • Overview: At the start of 2017, a consortium of capital markets firms united to partner with Appsbroker and Google Cloud to address MiFID II reporting requirements under the banner of Project Sentinel. • The driver: A significant part of MiFID II focused on client management - requiring firms to identify traders and salespeople, capturing their interactions with clients around a wide range of asset classes, for both electronic and voice-based trading activities. A viable platform was required to capture the necessary data points and timestamps for MiFID II’s increasingly demanding reports, such as best execution (RTS 27/28) and transparency, and to mutualize the cost of implementation across the consortium of firms. • The result: These firms can now quote and trade with clients, safe in the knowledge that they are compliant, flagging trade and transaction reporting requirements in real-time as the trade is negotiated with the client. In addition to using it for MiFID II compliance, they can also track sales activity at the desk level, and can more closely tailor their approaches to client requirements. The project has therefore enabled a return on regulatory compliance investment by providing intelligence back to the business. “Working with Google Cloud allowed us to build the functionality required in a more dynamic and cost-efficient manner. Google’s strength is enabling data analytics at scale in a secure environment with data storage tracking and encryption capabilities as standard.”- Alex Wolcough, Director, Appsbroker The Next-Gen Case: Digital Asset • Overview: Distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform provider Digital Asset has been working within a cloud environment since it first established operations four years ago. • The driver: Digital Asset opted not to build its own infrastructure and has been able to benefit from a development and testing environment that can be spun up and down as required. As a Kubernetes-based developer, Digital Asset felt it was most practical to move from its incumbent provider to Google Cloud. Digital Asset’s client base may be keen for on-premises deployments of DLT, but clients are happy to work in the cloud for demonstration and testing purposes. • The result: The DLT platform could now potentially benefit from adjacent ML capabilities in the future. “Last year, Google also offered a bespoke partnership approach to the vendor, rather than a standard software-as-a-service package, and workload costs were considerably more cost efficient.”- Dan O’Prey, Chief Marketing Officer, Digital Asset