By Tanja Zimmermann
We are in! KPMG is holding the Private Enterprise Tech Innovator competition in Germany for the first time. Of course, we are among the front runners! What is it about? KPMG is looking for the Technology Innovator in Germany. Technology companies from all over Germany are taking part. We have already qualified for the finals. Our technology has convinced among many applications and pitches of other startups. Now it goes one round further for us. We are pitching on September 23rd, 2021, and the final winners will be announced at Web Summit 2021. If everything goes well, we will be at the finals of Web Summit 2021 in Lisbon from November 1st and 4th, 2021. Fingers crossed!
The reasons for our qualification for the finals are not surprising to us. The selection is made by a panel of industry and KPMG experts. The criteria are diverse and cover the entire business model. Pitches are evaluated according to the criteria: Disruption and innovation, market potential, customer acceptance, market penetration and marketing, long-term potential, and quality.
What makes 21strategies disruptive and innovative?
Take 21strategies’ flagship AI hedge21®. It is a cognitive machine – the “chess computer” among treasury applications which can beat human trading desks with smart algorithmic hedging. It innovates the way organizations make hedging decisions – systematic, comprehensive, and mathematically optimal. It is disruptive to the banking industry that provides active currency overlay management. Rather than outsource active hedging to a bank, a treasurer has currency overlay management “at his fingertips” on his desktop, in the appearance of a smart virtual assistant, and in real time. “Never seen such a machine”, confirms a Big Five accounting firm. Though, not KPMG!
With hedge21®, corporates add not only systematic market awareness to their hedging process. hedge21® Recognized Market Picture® fuses quantitative and qualitative market data into a scenario-based market prediction. The prognosis then is being fed into a hedge21® Control Strategy, which computes the optimal hedge decision under many additional constraints, such as performance of a hedge position against a benchmark, time left until hedge maturity, a client’s risk appetite or a corporate hedging policy. Beat the human? Yes, ever more frequently. Moving towards “super-human” decisioning capabilities, hedge21® is a big step forward towards the 2nd machine age, upgrading the buy side with ever smarter decision-making AI.
What makes us special? Deep tech firms such as Google’s DeepMind give evidence that AI can make super-human decisions – but only in games like Go or StarCraft, where defined rules of the game apply. In contrast, 21strategies develops decisioning AI for the real world which is highly dynamic, complex, volatile, and uncertain. That’s the real challenge: Migrating next-gen AI into man-machine-teaming environments.
What about the market potential of 21strategies?
21strategies is contributing new capabilities to its ecosystem with historically unchartered areas for growth. Because AI making strategic or tactical decisions is still a rare animal in real life environments – and not only demanded by the $63.3 TN. annual global foreign currency hedging market and the $15.8 TN. annual OECD commodity trading industry – independent of sector or geography.
In complex and dynamic environments, decision-making becomes an even greater challenge also for governments. From the Global Financial Crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic, they exhibit capability gaps in informed decision-making and are in need for versatile security strategies.
21strategies’ SWARM21 also brings forth smart algorithmic decisioning strategies to counter new security challenges, as seen in France or in the United States where drone swarms with unknown attribution were loitering above nuclear plants. SWARM21 allows to train smart high-performance tactics that can control the clearing of the airspace from modern unmanned threats.
Customer adoption? Kudos to our innovative clients!
Global economies are based on profitability and thus competitiveness. And hedge21® does not only protect tight operational margins, but also allows to mitigate spread risk. For 21strategies’ clients, hedge21® is a strategic software, and firms with strategic pressure to keep their competitiveness up find relief when relying on hedge21®.
Provided under a B2B SaaS license, companies can use hedge21® as standalone web application with man-in-the-loop under full human control. That’s the standard off-the-shelf supply with manual intervention required. Or they decide to integrate hedge21® – upstream with their TRM software to capture their exposure automatically, and downstream with their trading venues for automatic execution of hedge21® hedge decisions. Our most innovative clients appreciate man-on-the-loop automation because it avoids errors and leads to further cost savings. What always remains to be observed, though: the compliance requirements of the auditors.
Off-the-shelf is a Good starting point
Clients have different hedging needs, and some of them require special dedication. For hedge21® clients who want to hedge risk of specific assets, such as metals or agricultural products, 21strategies trains made-to-custom hedging strategies. Once released and uploaded to hedge21®, they work in the same familiar environment as known from currency hedging strategies – with that same economic benefit and the same power to transform how organizations make decisions.
We would like to thank KPMG for the opportunity to make our innovative technology available to a wide audience. In this way, other companies can also benefit from the advantages. How can we help you? Visit our website to find out more about us at: https://www.21strategies.com/
