IG Group is a UK-based, multi-product online trading company, empowering people to access opportunities in over 17,000 financial markets through its suite of digital trading platforms. It was established in 1974 as one of the world’s first providers of financial derivatives - contracts for difference (CFDs), followed by financial spread betting and stockbroking services to retail traders. IG’s vision of providing the world’s best trading experience is powered by innovation and technology, putting its client’s needs at the heart of everything it does. IG has a range of fully managed investment portfolios, is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a FTSE 250 company.
Powering the next phase of growth
The technology leadership team at IG had already embarked on the journey to create the capabilities needed to become a resilient digital organization; strengthening its operational effectiveness. To fuel the next phase of growth, they needed an expert evaluation and input to define their technology strategy, which would serve as a blueprint to achieve the following goals:
- Develop a flexible, future-underpinning platform strategy to enable the resilience needed to support business growth and align with the future objectives.
- Build a future-horizon and long-term strategy looking beyond the current change initiatives to deliver lasting quality, resilience and value to the business.
- Ensure the strategy aligns with key technology themes and strategic business areas, whilst considering best practices and industry standards.
Partnering with Thoughtworks, IG embarked on a leading-edge review of how their technology and platforms needed to evolve to support their growth objectives. Thoughtworks brought an experienced digital platform strategy team with both strategic and technical expertise, to evaluate their current engineering practices, technology architecture, as well as understand their future direction of growth. The team used agile principles and practices to navigate through the strategy creation process and collaborated with cross-functional teams from product, data, technology and business to formulate “Resilience Plus” - the future technology strategy for IG.
One of the key areas in understanding the direction for IG was to consider the three digital era shifts of; customer expectations, speed of change and technology-driven value. Thoughtworks worked with executives throughout IG’s global business to understand their expectations of a future technology strategy. Together, the team explored a number of unique and leading technology insights, including the latest tech trends from Thoughtworks’ Technology Radar Volume 23.
We were delighted to work with Thoughtworks on the growth aligned platform and technology strategy consulting work. The team demonstrated an approach from the beginning that was highly adaptive, truly engaging and remained entirely aligned to our specific business and customer needs. We have a renewed confidence in our strategic direction to continue to best serve our demanding clients wherever they are. A real pleasure to work with Thoughtworks.
The in-depth analysis delivered from the strategy consulting engagement is now being used to continually inform technology and platform choices on a global basis within IG. It also helped in establishing executive buy-in at the board level, aligning the tech strategy over a forward-looking horizon. This is enabling IG to continue to adapt and best serve the evolving needs of clients, across markets, as IG continues to grow and diversify as a business.
