Bringing Institutional Investing into the 21st Century

It’s 2020, but it might as well be the mid-1980s when it comes to some of the processes involved in institutional investors purchasing financial products like shares and bonds.

“Individuals have access to nimble and responsive online brokerages like Questrade,” says MEIE student Awais Ullah. “Institutional investors have to work directly with financial services to purchase financial instruments. Which is fine, except the system the banks use is archaic and clunky. It’s entirely keyboard based – as if the mouse hadn’t been invented. It’s slow. It’s expensive. And it’s error prone.”

Awais has a solution: a web-based investment platform for banks secured by blockchain technology. The current system relies on manually entering information into several computers located at various financial services, which ensures its security. But a lot of people have to keyboard a lot of data, and it can take up to two days to process a trade. Blockchain technology will automate that distributed process, making it faster, cheaper, more secure and more accurate.

Awais grew up in Toronto and then spent a few years in Pakistan where he earned a BSc in Applied Accounting online from Oxford Brookes University before returning home, acquiring his CPA, and working full time. He then earned a certificate in Blockchain Fundamentals and joined the MEIE program to “learn how to turn eggs into chickens.”

His company, Mainnet Labs, is his first chicken. “Everyone in the MEIE program invests in your success. That seems especially fitting for an enterprise all about secure investment. I couldn’t be in a better place.”