I recalled my first time in Barcelona (must have been in the 70s?). I watched a Barcelona versus Inter Milano soccer game. Young and wild, I felt like in a "Rolling Stones" concert...in a stadium packed with 135.000 enthusiasts.
Barcelona, much more than home of soccer champions
Later, I recognized Barcelona's progressive development in so many layers, from (beyond-Gaudi) architecture to business.
Listening to the visitor we understood immediately that their services were (and are!) highly specialized and eminent practical. Their team was (and is!) made up of economists, mathematicians, engineers and computer experts. They had (and have!) an impressive client base ...
What a dream partner.
At the end of the workshop, he decided to utilize UnRisk technologies in a network set-up.
What a short sales cycle.
Turning on the innovative spiral
Was it just a mere license-set up-training project?
No. Intuitively, I offered him a featured client status with an open information policy. We roughly sketched an arrangement based on workshops, workouts in Barcelona and here...online info exchange...
On a higher-level understanding we agreed to jointly fight the worst enemy...be happy with the achieved.
And we got to work.
Enabling them to acquire new clients and offer new services we developed new deal types for their market specifics swiftly...created the Value at Risk Universe… They transformed computational knowledge into individual reports for each client.
Hidden in plain sight
When we took the UnRisk FACTORY to the first financial institutions they ran already a robust pre-realease and exploited its highly automated portfolio across scenario simulations. First, they used its web front-end for internal convenience…
Once, I took a few days off and went to the Costa Brava (100 km north of Barcelona) for a short vacation. I spontaneously offered to visit them in their office. At a half day workshop we came to the conclusion that their UnRisk technologies need only a few "handles" to make them a System as a Service (SaaS) builder.
We outlined a plan at the workshop and and got to work. A new business model came to light.
A Barcelona cloud that rains insight
First we linked the UnRisk Financial Programming Engines to the FACTORY...then we extended UnRisk to webUnRisk.
The core - the UnRisk FACTORY - produces massive valuable information...risk data... To transform this information with their specific knowledge into individual insight for their clients online they use webUnRisk.
Their Barcelona based cloud assesses now over 6000 financial instruments, derivatives and structured products of different complexity and underlying assets, valued over EUR 100 Billion on a daily base for several financial institutions, calculates risk of hundreds of investment funds, …
End of this year we will provide them with the capabilities to support the new central counter party regime…a regime that requires fundamentally new valuation methodologies for simple derivatives.
Beyond the development partnership
Some of their clients wanted to run their own "cloud". So, we extended our development partnership agreements with a re-marketing option.
It began with their agreement to use our technologies as tools for their financial consulting division… years later this division has re-invented itself…they became consulters and providers of online risk management services. Cloud aided financial advisors.
And we? We've decided to unleash the programming power behind UnRisk…to organize UnRisk technologies and products orthogonally…to deliver know-how packages…to even offer marketing support…
With amazing success. I call it co-evolution. It can be copied…with care.
