The best way to tell the FDX story is through the voice of our members. Welcome to the FDX Member Spotlight series, in which we sit down with some of the professionals from FDX member firms who juggle the responsibility of their day jobs with developing, integrating and implementing the FDX standard for the benefit of consumers and the entire financial services industry. We ask them about their experiences, goals and thoughts on the process.
George Anderson, Ninth Wave, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
John Vander Vennet, Ninth Wave, Head of Sales
Ninth Wave simplifies connections between financial institutions, apps, aggregators, and other external applications. The Ninth Wave platform is a single, secure point of connectivity through which financial institutions enable permissioned access to accountholder data. The company’s clients include some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including 3 of the top 5 U.S. banks and 9 of the top 10 wealth managers. Based in New York’s Financial District, Ninth Wave spun out from its former parent company, Enterprise Engineering, Inc. (EEI), in 2019, and recently closed on a significant minority investment from private equity firm SARORAS Private Capital.
George, why don’t you share some background on you and Ninth Wave, your latest entrepreneurial start-up.
GA: I’ve got a long history in financial services – more than 25 years working in some of the largest and most respected firms in the world. I’ve had the privilege of working with technologists across all divisions within major financial institutions – from capital markets, equities, swaps, derivatives, fixed income, foreign exchange, stock loan, and prime brokerage, to wealth management and retail and commercial banking. I learned a lot about building systems that are highly scalable and highly secure. In 1995, I took that experience and started Enterprise Engineering, and have since written several books focused on all aspects of data. Last year, we launched the Ninth Wave brand with the mission to continue EEI’s legacy as a trusted provider of secure data connectivity between financial institutions and third parties, including aggregators and fintechs. But now we’re a pure-play software firm rather than a software division within a consulting business. We want to be the single data gateway for all external channels seeking access to our financial institution clients and their customers’ permissioned data.
JVV: We’re seeing an explosion of third-party applications – fintechs, personal financial management and wellness tools, accounting software, and other business solutions. These apps need data from our financial institution clients. Our job is to help our clients manage that complexity and satisfy the needs of the both the financial institution and their end customer by enabling the transfer of accurate data in a secure, consistent manner. That’s really our goal.
About Ninth Wave
Ninth Wave delivers secure, seamless, and standardized data connectivity to fintechs and financial institutions of all sizes, through a single point of direct integration to a universal suite of open finance APIs. With configurable controls, visibility, and insights into all data sharing and data acquisition connections between aggregators, third-party apps, and internal applications, Ninth Wave empowers financial institutions and their customers with access and oversight to their connected apps, enabling secure data exchange in a holistic and scalable open finance ecosystem. Offering solutions for retail and commercial banks, wealth managers, credit card issuers, tax providers, and more, Ninth Wave provides unparalleled connectivity and universal compatibility to complex information systems, unlocking innovation, potential, and performance for your data. Contact us to learn more about Ninth Wave’s secure data connectivity features. Empowering open finance. At scale, at last.
