Speaker 1:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business.
For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ISIS exchanges around the world. Now, let's go Inside the ICE House.
Chris Edmonds:
For more than half a century, IPC has been at the forefront of making global trading more efficient. Through cutting-edge communication and connectivity solutions, the company has built systems and services seamlessly linking the global trading community. Beginning in 1970 with the launch of its first trading device, the IPC Series 1, the company has consistently embraced technological advancements to remain innovative and adaptable.
My own journey with IPC doesn't date back to the Series 1, but it began in the 1990s when I was the new guy sitting on an over-the-counter natural gas brokerage desk. Learning to use the IPC technology helped me develop the necessary skill of multitasking in real-time, sometimes point of contention between my wife and I. When I joined the brokerage, the team was in process of installing IPC phones, marking my first experience with IPC's products and services. Decades later, my path has come full circle with IPC re-entering my professional life through a collaboration with Intercontinental Exchange.
In September 2024, ICE and IPC teamed up to launch ICE Voice, an innovative cloud-based audio solution integrated into ICE Chat. Leveraging IPC's existing capabilities, ICE Voice enables persistent open connections within ICE Chat's expansive network of over 120,000 users. The platform supports full audio recording with customizable retention settings and offers on-demand playback of archived calls, creating a unified record of communication. Our guest today, IPC CEO Kurt Adams, has been instrumental in fostering impactful partnerships, such as the one with ICE, while guiding IPC's continued innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry.
Though still early in his tenure, he assumed the role in May of 2024, Kurt is leading IPC in its mission to strengthen and expand its position as a global leader in trading communication solutions. Joining me, Chris Edmonds, today's host of Inside the ICE House, Kurt will delve into the ICE Voice Initiative, the ICE-IPC partnership, and the transformative journey of IPC under his leadership. We'll explore the company's evolution, his strategic vision, and what lies ahead in 2025. My conversation with Kurt Adams, CEO of IPC Systems, is coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
Innovation is the wild ride, the challenge, the dream, the chaos. When change is needed, but the path is unclear, it's time to redefine your perspective. That's where the fun begins. Shift the paradigm. See the world through the lens of potential. Challenge becomes innovation. Dream turns to design. Chaos emerges as clarity. Let's transform business together.
Chris Edmonds:
Our guest today, IPC CEO Kurt Adams, has been instrumental in fostering impactful partnerships such as the one with ICE while guiding IPC's continued innovation and resilience in a rapidly evolving industry.
Though still early in his tenure, he was appointed to the role in May of 2024, Kurt is leading IPC in its mission to strengthen and expand its position as a global leader in trading communication solutions. Thanks so much for joining us at Inside the ICE House.
Kurt Adams:
Thank you for having me, Chris. It's great to be here.
Chris Edmonds:
As I mentioned in the prelude, ICE and IPC Systems unveiled Ice Voice, a cutting-edge, cloud-based audio solution integrated with ICE Chat, our industry-leading instant messaging platform for commodities. From IPC's perspective, what were the primary factors that drove the decision to collaborate with us?
Kurt Adams:
Yeah, I think Chris, really, one thing that we've been struggling with in this market for a long time is interoperability, right. These fragmented systems where our customers we talk to again and again about the fragmentation of the market and wanting something more holistic. We see what ICE is doing in the market, the innovation that you're focused on. We're really focused on innovation at IPC as well, and how can we use this as an opportunity to show real collaboration in a way that it hasn't existed before in this market.
In my previous life, I spent several, actually two decades in FinTech, and there was a point in time where competitors, banks, other tech companies had all these disparate point solutions, but they finally got their act together and collaborated and created real, true interoperability and interconnected systems, and ultimately the customer's the winner. So we saw this as a great opportunity with the relationship between our two organizations to start and really embed IPC Voice with ICE Chat on the ICE Desktop to now start moving the market in that direction.
Chris Edmonds:
Excellent, excellent. Can you talk behind the scenes the partnership that we have? We talked about the innovation, inspiring the venture, and where that was going. Why us right now? You talked about our innovation, but there's something in there that your team saw or you saw that said, "Hey, these are the right guys at that point." How did you evaluate that?
Kurt Adams:
I would say that while we have our business strategies, there was a great cultural fit, Chris. I mean, the two organizations, and we talk a lot of times about the human component with this age of AI and digital innovation and all that's happening in the market, but there needs to be that cultural fit between two organizations to strike the right partnership.
So many times, partnerships fail. Great on paper. Great on PowerPoint, but the cultural fit isn't there. So we saw the fit of two organizations at the right place at the right time, and that's really where we came together.
Chris Edmonds:
I remember that from our first call that we had together. We didn't know each other, and all of a sudden, start speaking the same language and finishing each other's sentences, which was-
Kurt Adams:
That's right.
Chris Edmonds:
... interesting at that time. ICE Voice integrates with IPC's Connexus Unigy platform.
Kurt Adams:
Correct.
Chris Edmonds:
That's a private cloud platform, enables seamless connections through ICE Chat. With over 120,000 clients is sort of the opportunity that we have to-
Kurt Adams:
[inaudible 00:07:35].
Chris Edmonds:
... go out there. How will this technology revolutionize the communication workflow that IPC has come to know... be known for?
Kurt Adams:
Sure. Let me... I always like to start with examples rather than the technical terms. But really think about as our two organizations come together with these capabilities of a trader sitting at their desk using the ICE Desktop for the market information that they're accessing, initiating a trade on ICE Chat, but for some reason that gets escalated. There's a complexity in the trade. There needs to be a voice interaction. Literally, the trader can click on the chat icon and go directly into voice, instantaneously.
When we talk about interoperability from a user standpoint, they look and feel and operate like the same system. It's not toggling between applications going on different screens. It really is seamless. And so often I hold up here what we have, and in our consumer lives, it's how we're used to interacting, but when it comes to our work lives, it's clunkier, right. There's a complexity that's brought into it, which we all understand because of regulatory and compliance. There's a reason there. But oftentimes, I worry that we hide behind that in order to do things that are just far simpler that people are used to doing in their daily lives.
How do we bring that into the workplace? So really having that workflow with a trader, seamless, frictionless from a communication protocol, regardless if it's chat if it's voice. Ultimately, we like to go into text, video, really any form of communication that is a single repository with all the information in it that can be shared with compliance department used for ultimately the settlement of the trade and that seamless workflow that starts at the trading desk, but goes all the way through to the settlement of the transaction.
Chris Edmonds:
So truly immediate gratification in yet another part of our life is coming available-
Kurt Adams:
That's right.
Chris Edmonds:
... at that point. ICE Voice is designed to address the current needs of traders, as you were just mentioning. Those need continually to evolve alongside technological advancements. How does IPC plan to adapt ICE Voice in similar technologies to stay ahead and meet the changing demands in the years to come? You talked about all the way to the settlement.
Kurt Adams:
Right.
Chris Edmonds:
Can you give me that roadmap or at least how you vision that roadmap?
Kurt Adams:
Sure. So what I'm really thinking about is smarter workflow as we use the example between ICE Desktop, ICE Chat, and IPC voice working through that.
But ultimately, as we think about this interoperability, how can we use this as a start, but ultimately start bringing in AI as a way to analyze sentiment analysis or use unstructured data that we're driving through these trades and structure it in a way that is helping the trader with their workflow, helping the compliance departments in order of looking or surveilling these trades, how they need to surveil them.
And really bringing in the AI integration in terms of increasing that and turning data into actionable information that can not only be used to grow from the trader standpoint and be more efficient at what they do but also have greater compliance from a regulatory standpoint.
Chris Edmonds:
You think this becomes a training tool potentially, or has the opportunity to become a training tool on interaction, given the-
Kurt Adams:
Yeah.
Chris Edmonds:
... regulatory concerns that may exist about words matter?
Kurt Adams:
Words do matter, and I would say the other thing that's happening is new applications are popping up all the time, and we really need to be in a position to embed into any one of those applications that is going to be useful for the end user. But today, we can't because we don't have some of those adherence to compliance and the regulatory policies that we need to adhere to.
This is a great start to start proving that going forward and be able to integrate more and more collaborating with these applications and embedding them more in what we do. Ultimately, [inaudible 00:12:15] areas where companies compete, where they collaborate, and where they strike ultimate partnerships. But if we really keep the end user at heart, we're going to do what's right for the market, what's right for our customers, and what's right for our users.
Chris Edmonds:
Obviously, IPC has been through a number of changes since its founding in 1973.
Kurt Adams:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Edmonds:
My own experience, as I said in the prelude, was learning this business on the same day that the firm that hired me showed me what an IPC phone was.
Kurt Adams:
Yeah.
Chris Edmonds:
I understand, and I think the world understands what separated IPC at that time, the evolution that you created and where that... the company created and where it went. What do you see as IPC's current separation point and the value it brings to the customers? I mean, you're talking about things that are coming in the future, but today, there's something that exists there that separates you guys and continues to provide that platform that you're leading.
Kurt Adams:
Right. I would say, today, the most important asset within IPC is our community of users. So there are over 200,000 participants on our network, but that community is disconnected, meaning they don't know who each other are when they're interacting on this. Our ability to connect these communities together in a far more effective way is really, I would say, the first move that we're making as part of this transformation. But today, we have that really sticky network.
We also have, as we've been known as a communication device provider rather than an application platform business or a network business, which is really where we're moving. But that... I would say that communication device, the latest version that we've rolled out, fully supports applications that are both internal and external, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth enabled and also has mobile connectivity.
So as we start thinking about being able to create agility and flexibility to our end users, starting with a piece of hardware, but embedding the software and connecting that network around it is really our main focus right now at IPC, knowing that hardware is still an important component, but I think longer term, it's not going to be the star of the show the way that it was for the last 50 plus years in the business.
Chris Edmonds:
And that'll come at different times, right.
Kurt Adams:
Right.
Chris Edmonds:
I mean, your user community is going to evolve not on the same day.
Kurt Adams:
Correct.
Chris Edmonds:
Not in a big bang. I remember when we first started talking about the partnership, and we went out to a few customers, they're like, "Yeah, this is great. We love this, but where's my button board?"
Kurt Adams:
Right.
Chris Edmonds:
And you're like, "We're not talking about a button board." And they're like, "Well, if you're going to talk to us, I need a button board." And we got to have those springboards if you will, in order to capture what that future opportunity holds. And I appreciate you all taking that feedback on board and bringing it to pass. So I look forward to those inquiring minds seeing those button boards in the coming weeks [inaudible 00:15:33]-
Kurt Adams:
I do too.
Chris Edmonds:
So let's shift gears just a little bit, and let's talk about you. I mean, you appointed the position earlier in 2024. You got a little more than the six months under the belt-
Kurt Adams:
Right.
Chris Edmonds:
... at the helm now and envisioned-
Kurt Adams:
Feels like a lot longer, Chris.
Chris Edmonds:
I'm sure that it does.
Kurt Adams:
Yes.
Chris Edmonds:
I'm sure that it does. You've had a diverse career. You talked about your time in FinTech. You've been in the payment system along the way. How has your leadership style having to adapt in this space in order to ultimately accomplish that vision?
Kurt Adams:
Yeah. Well, I am... you think about things that you do in life. They have a purpose. You don't know when at the time, but I started my career on a trade desk in Chicago. The first six years after college, I was working on a trade desk, started initially at this on the CBOE, then was on the desk. So there's a living the life of a trader, granted that was a long time ago, but some things don't change, right.
And culturally having an understanding around as we think about innovation that's happening, we talk about AI integration, smarter workflow, cloud adoption, things of that sort. Oftentimes, in our day-to-day lives, there's a resistance to new things happening unless we can really show the proof points of why does it matter to you, why does it matter to me?
So I would say that really what I've been spending my time on for the first six months is listening, not telling, spending time with our customers and talking with them about, "What do you love about IPC? What drives you crazy? If you could change something, what would that be? Where are we missing the mark, and where do you need to see more of us showing up?" It's been doing that with our customers, as well as what I've found at IPC, it's an incredible employee base.
I mean, the amount of people there with tenure of a decade, two decades plus, it's pretty incredible. It's a passionate group of people that, regardless of the circumstances of the company or the market, they had this tremendous conviction for what they do and serving the customer. So it's I couldn't feel more fortunate to be at IPC. There's a lot of work that we have to do going forward, but it really is an incredible asset with team members, with customers, with partners that I couldn't be more excited about.
And in thinking about, I would say, my career outside of trading in FinTech, there's a parallel there. And Chris, you and I talked about at our first meeting, which is there's a platform connected to a network to deliver experiences. Now, whether it's moving money or moving transactions, it's very similar. And 20 plus years ago, the payments industry was where I see the current market that we operate in today. And so, using some of those pages out of the playbook to really start bringing some of the things that we've talked about to life.
Chris Edmonds:
Well, in having that conversation and listening to your answer, you do discuss a number of both tangible and intangible factors, right. Tangible, we know there's a physical phone. Intangible, we know it's connected to a network where other people have opinions along the way.
As you think about your leadership style, how do you measure that performance between the incredible intangibles and the absolutely necessary tangible metrics that you got to look at? Sometimes, those get misaligned, especially when you got both the customer base and a team, a very capable team, maybe not in the same place at the same moment in time.
Kurt Adams:
My leadership style is, before focusing on any metrics, really winning the hearts and minds of the employees, our partners, and our customers, and it's really leading by example and thinking about, we're not... I'm not asking for anyone in IPC to do something that I'm not willing to do. When we ask our customer's opinion about something, and they share it with us, and we say we're going to go deliver something, we are going to deliver it.
And the metrics at the time may not make the most sense, but ultimately, it's the right thing to do. And if we continue to operate that way, those, I would say, KPIs, SLI... SLAs, financial measures, those are going to come. But if we focus on those on the front end, we miss the point of what we're doing and why we're doing it.
So it's really, I would say, the first six months with our investor, with our employees, and with our customers talking about what matters to them, knowing that we have an incredible opportunity to drive meaningful financial growth within the company and deliver these products to our customers, but we have to focus on what's important first. And so that's really my leadership style, is spending that time listening, inspiring, and really winning the hearts and minds before we get into the tactical execution.
Chris Edmonds:
We spend a lot of time here at ICE talking about being client-obsessed, and you're touching on a number of those themes in that answer.
Kurt Adams:
Yes.
Chris Edmonds:
And when I think about that, typically, the greatest challenges I see when we're being client-obsessed is when we get that client feedback maybe we weren't expecting. It can be good, or it can be bad, but it comes with a request that no one had on the radar.
Kurt Adams:
Right.
Chris Edmonds:
Have you gotten any of those yet in the seat?
Kurt Adams:
I have. And I would say what I've been committed to is listening and evaluating with all of our clients. And if it makes sense then... And what I mean is if it makes sense not being a one-off request that ultimately isn't going to deliver the value to them, or it's going take a tremendous amount of work time and expense, but ultimately isn't delivering much, then to be able to have that honest conversation with our customer about why that's the case.
What I've found, though, more, Chris, is customers coming to us with an idea and saying, "Try it out with us. We think that there's a real market beyond us for this idea. Try it with us. Let's prove it out, and if it works, bring it out to the rest of your clients. Just give us a head start."
Chris Edmonds:
Yeah.
Kurt Adams:
That's what they're asking for. And what I found is, and I would say the early days. I've only been here six months. But the first couple of months is when you're at a company, sometimes having so much domain expertise can hurt you, meaning you can think you know more than the market, you stop listening, and you're just doing based on what you think the market needs, what customers want. You deliver it, and they say-
Chris Edmonds:
"Yeah, thanks."
Kurt Adams:
"... It's okay but we really wanted this." And that's where I would say we've really moved forward, I would say, in an accelerated fashion with our clients. They're coming to us, they're telling us, "We want more." And those unique one-off requests that really aren't scalable or applicable outside of a single use case, there's been a few, but not many. And our clients, I think, have really shown us, "We want to be on the journey with you."
And there's almost this curiosity and this pride of, "Prove it out with us and bring it to the market, but we're the ones that actually help develop it." And I would say what we're doing together with IPC and ICE and ICE Voice is a great example of that, right. We had this idea, and we think that there's a tremendous opportunity to go do something in the market together, and it doesn't serve... it serves far more than the two of us.
Chris Edmonds:
Yeah.
Kurt Adams:
Ultimately, it serves the clients that we have collectively today and new clients that either one of us.
Chris Edmonds:
It truly is the opportunity for one plus one to equal more than two along the way and then, hopefully, far more than three or four to get there. As we think about that innovation and what we're asked to do for our common client base, cloud and AI, forefront you've mentioned a couple of times as part of your roadmap on the innovation side, as we think about that together, we have to have at least three parties get there at the same time on some of those pieces, or we have to empower those.
But as you look at that, I'm going to put words in your mouth and say the return on investment for that innovation that you're willing to support at that moment in time, is the cloud and AI associated with that your first step to go, or is it just something on the list? If it works there, great. If it doesn't work there, we'll happen to do it because we have this tried and true system that's plugged in this incredible network with 200,000 customers already on it. Do I need to really change their life just so I can say I'm in cloud and AI?
Kurt Adams:
Right. So it's a great question, and we've been debating that within IPC for the last six months and probably longer before I had arrived, but I think the cloud and cloud adoption is less understood than I would've thought. Meaning there are many that I've talked to both within our organization and clients, which is the cloud is just a way to lower cost and increase margins.
Chris Edmonds:
Or that's the theory.
Kurt Adams:
That's the theory. But I would say the cloud is the tip of the spear of the things that we're talking about around smarter workflow, continued innovation in AI because you need the chassis and you need the delivery mechanism to push that through to the market versus different versions of software, different servers across the whole host of clients globally, and I would say almost a Frankenstein like infrastructure, which makes it very difficult to deliver new releases, innovation into the market, be able to do that AI integration that we've talked about.
I mean, think about the days when just in our lives when we had software at home when you'd have to have the disk and upload the newest version of that. I mean, we would never think about that today. It just the release comes through, and it's automatically updated in our mobile device or our computers or wherever that may be. But again, in the workplace, there's still that dialogue around why move for the cloud.
What's in it for us from an economic standpoint as well as future product enhancements? And I would say one of the things that customers talk to us about is manual intervention and complexity. A lot of that goes away. So the ability to move into the cloud does facilitate the delivery of a lot of what we've been talking about so far today.
Chris Edmonds:
Security, even before we get to the AI function of it, that's got to be a mission-critical thing on your path in order to service those. How do you balance those two between the ease of maintenance and the security function that exists there?
Kurt Adams:
One, I would say what we obsess about in addition to our customers at IPC is reliability and trust, and we absolutely have to have that trust through our clients trusting us and it's a two-way relationship that we have. And that reliability, as you know, also Chris, it needs to have that uptime. These mission-critical communications are so important that if they don't work, people go dark, right. And the CrowdStrike is a great example you had. Now, I would say with the cloud, even if we have the ability to do the real-time updates, clients may not elect to do that.
We may create security measures to say, "It's ready to go now, but we're going to do one more test before we release it into our base of users." There's lots, I would say, and that's where the flexibility comes in, how we think about that collectively, where there are some things where I would say we're less worried about and others that have a far higher likelihood of risk, and we measure that with our approach of how we do those releases, how we collaborate with our clients. And some may have different tolerances than others, but on our end at IPC, before anything is ready to go, we need to be 100% sure that it's going to work and that it'll be reliable.
Chris Edmonds:
You announced a deal recently with Intercom Systems.
Kurt Adams:
Yes.
Chris Edmonds:
Walk me through how that's creative to that vision that you mentioned and to where the company's headed on this transformation that you're leading.
Kurt Adams:
So some of my earliest conversations, two weeks into the role, one of our clients said, "Why do you force fragmentation into the market?" I didn't really understand what they were talking about, so I asked them. And they said, "Your solution is great for the trade desk, but we have to stitch together other systems in order to get a full picture of the transaction." So I asked them, "What does that look like?"
And we talked about compliance and the ability for the compliance departments to have access to certain information to have the surveillance tools that they need around transactions, and then ultimately working to the back office of the settlement and clearing. And how, along the way, there are multiple systems that they have to either cobble together or someone needs to assemble them, but it's not done for them. And they said, "We wish someone in the market would provide something more holistic rather than just a point solution."
So Intercom is really a... it's a company, I would say, with an incredible product, meaning a matrix communications software that really is going to allow us to serve that middle and back office in a way that we can't today. So moving from, I would say, the top of the house with a trade desk and be able to have a single stack that can go all the way through to settlement. Now, customers can unlock components to that, all of it or different components, but we do have the ability now to deliver a complete end-to-end solution for our clients.
Chris Edmonds:
As we think about this transition, both of technology, probably of how you're servicing some of the existing clients on a historical basis if you paint me a picture as your client a year from now or three years from now, what does IPC look like?
Kurt Adams:
So I would say what IPC looks like a few years from now is we talk about software as a service. I really think it is being broader than that, so we can call it application as a service. Meaning there's a hardware component, a software component, and a managed services component where our clients are looking for IPC, and we deliver it all.
Automatically coming in, obviously, they're going to... we're not going to do it unless they want it, but upgrading the hardware that they need, the releases of the software, and having the managed services team that is delivering the managed services that are typically very unique and complex where they don't have to hire their own teams.
So it's really a complete solution that they're going to look to us for all of those components versus bespoke, I would say, just software delivery. And what it really starts building into is how do we start thinking about powering that ecosystem differently with the hardware, the software, and the managed services.
Chris Edmonds:
So a comprehensive communication solution in a box, hardware, software, that continuously evolves as you and the company.
Kurt Adams:
Correct.
Chris Edmonds:
Is that fair?
Kurt Adams:
That's fair.
Chris Edmonds:
Okay.
Kurt Adams:
That's a better explanation than I just gave.
Chris Edmonds:
I know if it's better, but I'm learning a lot as we go through this conversation. As we get ready to wrap this conversation, what's the one message you want your customers to walk away when they hear this podcast.
Kurt Adams:
We are here to transform with you and to really drive growth in your business as a true partner. Not as a vendor, but as a true partner. And we are not going to sacrifice reliability, and we are not going to do anything to jeopardize our trust with you.
We want to be along for the journey, and you are what makes our company what it is today. And we really want our customers to know how important they are and to be viewed as a strategic partner and not a technology vendor.
Chris Edmonds:
Got it. Partnership is the key.
Kurt Adams:
Partnership's key. Yeah.
Chris Edmonds:
Well, our relationship began discussing this partnership. This podcast has given us a little bit of opportunity for us to explain that. I greatly appreciate the partnership, and I look forward to evolving together. Kurt, thanks so much for joining us at Inside the ICE House.
Kurt Adams:
Thank you, Chris. I had a great time today.
Chris Edmonds:
Awesome.
Speaker 1:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen, and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified.
Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes.
Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security, or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
