2017 in Review – A Birds-eye View

As we review the year 2017, there is more than enough to look back at, to celebrate and to derive lessons from. At InfoWARE, we are not left out! At the years’ end, we can definitely look back and say “Wow, What a year we’ve had.”

The year saw our great nation bouncing out of recession, phenomenal growth in the capital market (Nigeria ASI ranked second best-performing market in the world in 2017), amongst other positive changes.

In the space of the 52 weeks and countless hours in the year, our team’s passion was to put you our customers first and serve you tirelessly and the result; an 82.5% customer satisfaction rating from direct customer feedback. In addition, we delved into exciting new frontiers and made groundbreaking impacts in the Nigerian business ecosystem (directly or indirectly).

What we have done!

Let’s take a bird’s eye view of 2017. Here are few things we can brag of (if you let us say) as the year’s achievements:

• FGN Savings bond application used by all stockbrokers across the country: Using the application, InfoWARE has had a material impact on the entire country in terms of increasing savings income to the Nigerian Retail investor
• Direct connectivity to the GSE: We achieved direct FIX connectivity to the GSE and executed live trades
• Lagos State ETF: Lagos state ETF currently uses InfoWARE Loans/mortgage system to process thousands of loans for SMEs which in turn facilitates the creation of thousands of jobs and improves the lives of Lagosians and Nigerians in general.
• Asset Management: InfoWARE beat out large foreign competitors to deliver Asset Management/Mutual Fund solution to one of the largest merchant banks in the country as well as one of the largest private pension fund administrators in the country.
• Several PFAs signed up on InfoWARE ProTrader platform. The only such platform for PFAs to directly participate in the market
• Introduction of IOI (Indication of Interest) functionality: This is a game changer for the Nigerian market. Previously, only expensive options from Bloomberg was available. But with InfoWARE introducing this into the market, it will perhaps increase liquidity and transparency and enable broader market participation.
• ANR (Analyst Recommendations):  This capability introduced via our Market Data Terminal (IMDT) has improved investor research and information.
• BizChat: Our Business chat functionality equivalent to the Bloomberg chat which has  the unique offer of free access to market data has enabled a broader market participation and less expensive communications between BUY and SELL side market operators
• InfoWARE Finance Portal: Introduced investor profile and advisory capability
• Platform APIs: We made significant improvements to our Platform APIs. Leading banks and big-time developers use our platform APIs to build additional systems to transform their businesses. For example, one of the largest known companies Vanso (now a part of Interswitch) uses the InfoWARE platform API to build applications for merchant banks in Nigeria.

2017 InfoWARE CEO Forum Event

Highlights of our 2017

Some of the climax events of 2017 were:

• Our Partnership with Business Day: Delivery of a Financial information portal for Business Day
• InfoWARE’ CEO as speaker at the 2017 CIS conference
• InfoWARE sponsored the 2017 Nigerian Stock Exchange Market data event
• InfoWARE’S Partnership with RapidAddition UK
• InfoWARE’S Maiden editions of CEO and users conference. Amongst many too numerous to count.

Our 2018 Goals

InfoWARE is extremely bullish about 2018. Our array of customer-focused solutions will bring better and long lasting collaborations to grow our customers’ businesses whether it’s to scale up their asset management retail operations, focus on high Networth individuals or trade multiple African markets as a one-stop shop.  We have big visions for the year, here’s a peek at our plans:

• AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Deep Machine Learning capabilities: InfoWARE will integrate AI capabilities into the application to make the application simpler to use, prevent user errors and assist customers perform data mining to engage their customers better.
• Deeper Research Capabilities in IMDT
• A new EBiz release: With stunning new UI and improved features for retail investor management
• Asset Management: We will increase the scope of our InfoWARE Asset Management solution across all asset classes and match all new regulatory requirements
• OMS/EMS: Scale-out InfoWARE FIXHub deployments to enable one-stop show trading of multiple African markets (Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Kenya)

We as a team at InfoWARE, do not only think it important to consider the growth we have made in the year 2017, we also think it imperative to recognize the support we have received from our numerous customers and we are proud to state that our customers have also soared in their business – partnering with InfoWARE – to make big waves in their own respective spaces and we celebrate their successes of the year 2017.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!