A trailblazer providing exceptional AI-powered software for generating equity structured product ideas: IVM Markets

IVM Markets was co-founded by Volodymyr Gubskyi and Ildar Farkhshatov, inspired by their extensive experience in structured products at major financial institutions. After spending nearly two decades in leading global financial institutions, Gubskyi recognized a critical gap in the market: large banks prioritized standardized structured products, leaving little room for personalized investment solutions. This lack of customization limited financial distributors’ ability to cater to the unique needs of their clients. Seeking to change this, Gubskyi and Farkhshatov left Deutsche Bank to create IVM Markets, a cutting-edge SaaS cloud-based platform designed to empower financial distributors like brokers, private banks, and asset managers.

IVM Markets offers an AI-driven platform that enables distributors and asset managers to generate and optimize personalized structured product ideas, catering specifically to retail and high-net-worth clients. The platform curates thematic stock and index lists, leveraging data to identify structured product variations with higher potential returns and lower risks. This helps its clients deliver more optimal tailored investment solutions that outperform traditional methods, driving advisor engagement and enhancing their competitive edge. IVM also integrates with multi-issuer platforms, ensuring seamless trade execution and further streamlining the investment process. By democratizing access to personalized structured products, IVM Markets helps financial distributors enhance client outcome, grow their market share and boost trade volumes, transforming the investment landscape.

In conversation with Ildar Farkhshatov Co-Founder and CTO of IVM Markets

Q. IVM Markets offers an AI-driven platform for structured products. Can you explain how your technology optimizes product ideas and what makes it stand out in an increasingly competitive market?

IVM Markets empowers structured product buyers by offering AI-powered thematic stock and index curation. Our platform allows users to optimize their basket of stocks, incorporating protective measures like maturity, downside barriers and autocall levels. This gives investors the ability to find iterations that maximize upside potential while minimizing bear market drawdown risks, all within the thematic investment strategy they initially wanted. What’s unique about IVM is that we don’t compete with other parts of the value chain. Instead, our vision is to enhance the ‘what do I want to buy’ phase in the structured product journey. We have many synergiies with multi-issuer platforms, which handle the ‘how to buy’ part, ensuring buyers get the best price electronically. Additionally, we collaborate with lifecycle providers, helping investors determine what to buy when reinvesting or rolling over their trades. It’s all about seamless integration and delivering the best possible outcomes for investors.

Q. Your platform’s ability to generate and optimize trade ideas in seconds has been praised by clients. How does IVM’s AI engine handle the vast amount of data to provide such accurate recommendations?

IVM’s AI engine processes massive amounts of data by leveraging advanced algorithms that constantly learn from user-generated iterations. The engine curates thematic stock and index lists, optimizing each structured product iteration based on the client’s specific criteria—such as risk tolerance, market trends, and investment goals. By rapidly analyzing thousands of variations in just seconds, we can provide trade ideas that strike the right balance between higher upside potential and reduced downside risk. Our AI engine combines powerful stock curation with optimization to ensure that every recommendation is finely tuned to deliver the best possible outcomes. For distributors, this level of precision not only allows them to offer tailored solutions but also increases advisor engagement, growing their market share and trade volumes.

Q. The structured products landscape is experiencing rapid growth in Europe. How has IVM Markets adapted its offerings to meet the specific demands of these expanding markets?

 IVM Markets has adapted by focusing on optimizing existing structures and enhancing personalization in its product offerings. As the market in Europe and Asia grows, we’re seeing decreasing brokerage margins due to increasing competition and digitalization. This shift is being addressed through multi-issuer platforms, which streamline the pricing process. It’s a natural progression in the digital journey—moving from issuer-distributor interactions that focus on pricing the final deal as fast as possible, to a more client-centric approach where we ask, ‘what is it that the advisor wants to buy in the first place?’

Human financial advisors remain crucial in helping investors understand complex products, and IVM supports them by enabling the discovery of product ideas that best meet their clients’ needs through the optimization of baskets, protections, and maturities within thematic plays. We integrate seamlessly with multi-issuer platforms, ensuring a smooth transition from idea discovery to executing the trade with issuers, giving advisors the tools they need to deliver tailored, optimized solutions.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

The future of IVM Markets is all about further enhancing the user experience and optimizing structured product selection. We have some exciting new features on the way, with one of the most anticipated being the launch of our AI-powered dashboard. It’s designed for users who prefer not to engage with complex software—allowing the AI to handle the development process for them with a simple, one-click solution to find optimal investment ideas. The software does this by streamlining the process of generating structured product ideas by learning from user-generated iterations, providing highly accurate and personalized recommendations.  This innovation will boost client engagement and operational efficiency, ensuring that our customers stay ahead in an ever-evolving market.

Meet the stalwarts shaping the future of IVM Markets 

IVM Markets was co-founded by Volodymyr Gubskyi, who drew on close to 20 years of structured products experience at major institutions including Merrill Lynch, RBS, and Deutsche Bank, alongside Ildar Farkhshatov, the cofounder and CTO, who has nearly 20 years of experience in derivatives trading, quantitative approaches, and software at firms including AllianceBernstein, and Deutsche Bank. Today IVM Markets has a self-directed, strong, and scalable management and operating team that drives the company’s success independently. Eric Glicksman, the President,   recently joined the firm from UBS, where he spent 18 years as the founder and Managing Director of its Structured Solutions business in New York. Justin Sangster, the Commercial Director, has over 10 years of experience in B2B SaaS and particularly in the data-driven decision space. Nadia Kozyreva, the COO, has close to 20 years of experience in operational risks, compliance, and management in firms such as GE Capital and Deutsche Bank.

This leadership team, complemented by a diverse group of 20 professionals with backgrounds in investment banking, software development, and independent financial firms, has evolved into a self-scaling entity. Their ability to autonomously hire and integrate new talent ensures IVM’s continued growth and operational excellence.

IVM’s AI engine processes massive amounts of data by leveraging advanced algorithms that constantly learn from user-generated iterations. The engine curates thematic stock and index lists, optimizing each structured product iteration based on the client’s specific criteria—such as risk tolerance, market trends, and investment goals.