FinIQ - Customise, Yet Best Price!

PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Today, we live in an era of aggregation. E-Commerce firms revolutionized the retail market with its
market place for products. E-Taxi took the taxi-industry by storm with its business model. E-Bookings
have changed the way we reserve hotel rooms, book air tickets and the way we watch movies
respectively.
In financial markets, especially OTC derivatives the margins were huge and it was convenient for the
sell-side investment banks to have minimal transparency. With the troubles of 2008-2009, the
transparency lid was forced open and the buy-side started getting a taste of best price execution. Sellside cooperated reluctantly and over the last two years, they started accepting best price execution
platform as a necessity. All the single-dealer platforms started losing their shares to multi-dealer
platforms for almost all asset classes, starting with FX OTC and later, equity OTC and fixed income and
the same is likely to happen for commodities and credit.

QUESTIONS:
The teams are supposed to provide (not limited to only) detailed solutions to the following questions:
1. What will be the next phase and application for Price aggregation/Price discovery/Best execution?
2. Is this model sustainable? Evaluate against parameters including but not limited to scalability, longrun profitability, customer behaviour, competitive advantage and market needs.
3. Will something new emerge out of this model? If so, what? Explain in brief.
4. Do you think the same evolution model would apply to high end banking products, especially
bespoke or tailor-made OTC structured products and why?
5. Price aggregation revolutionized the electronic financial marketplace in 2010. What would be the
next disruptive innovation in this sector in 2020? (Solution should not be limited to OTC or banking)
[Note: Secondary research is highly encouraged while finding solutions]

FORMAT FOR SUBMISSION:

The submission has to be in the format of a PowerPoint presentation, with not more than 30 slides
and not less than 20 slides (excluding the cover slides)
The teams have to mail their analysis and solutions to gulsar.a@finiq.com before the submission date
mentioned in the timeline. The header of the mail has to be <FinIQ CYBP_team name submission>

RULES AND REGULATIONS:

The competition is open only to students of IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta
Only students from the two-year flagship programme in both the campuses are eligible to take part
in the competition
Students from both the first year and second year are eligible to participate in the contest
There should be a minimum of 3 members and there can be a maximum of 6 members in each
team
The team can have a mix of first year and second year students or only students of one particular
year
There should be atleast one non-exchange student in each team
The decision of the judges is final and binding

TIMELINE:
September 23 Release of problem statement for FinIQ CYBP challenge
October 23 Last date for submissions
October 30 Announcement of results

PRIZES:
There will be a total of three winners, with atleast one winner from each college
The total prize money is Rs 2,25,000/- INR
The prize money is 75,000/- INR for each winning team
Members of the winning teams will also receive Pre-Placement Interviews (PPIs) with FinIQ Consulting

ABOUT FINIQ:
FinIQ is a Singapore-based Financial Engineering firm. We provide proven solutions for treasury,
derivatives, fixed income, structured products distribution, pricing, order management and post-trade
life cycle management. We also act as business accelerators for treasury and wealth management
structured products and have clients across 30 banking groups and 80 banking units throughout the
world.
For further enquiries regarding the competition or the firm, please contact:
IIM-A: Suman Arra suman.a@finiq.com (+91 70436 68986)
IIM-A: Gulsar Ahamed gulsar.a@finiq.com (+91 70280 30280)
IIM-C: Makarand Dabholkar makarand.d@finiq.com (+91 77570 07229)

DEFINITIONS:
OTC Over The Counter is a term used to define reverse enquiry products, where a client gets to
decide parameters of a financial contract. E.g. Stocks, Bonds, Futures, Exchange Traded Options have
fixed product parameters. A client can only decide the quantity and the direction buy or sell, so they
are simply brokerage products. The financial institution facing the client does not construct or alter
the product. In OTC products, the client gets to specify the asset class, underlying(s), tenor, strike,
barrier, callable, target, range, floater, stop loss, limit, premium budget, etc. and the financial
institution obliges by constructing the necessary financial instrument on-the-fly.