PARTNER CONTENT

Katia Babbar, CEO of Immersive Finance, discusses the changing demands of institutional derivatives markets and why quantitative infrastructure is becoming critical to the next generation of investment workflows.

1. In no more than 50 words, please describe your firm’s service offering and what makes it Special.

Immersive Finance provides institutional quantitative infrastructure spanning market data, exchange connectivity, pricing, portfolio risk and performance analytics. We enable institutions to research, deploy, monitor and manage derivatives strategies through a trusted platform that supports front-middle- and back-office workflows with institutional-grade resilience, governance and transparency.

2. How would you describe the role your services played in helping your clients navigate the economic landscape of the past 12 months?

The past 12 months have reinforced a lesson I’ve seen throughout my career: institutions value resilience most when markets are least predictable. We’re particularly proud of three things. First, we helped systematic funds research, validate and deploy strategies that adapted to changing market conditions,
supporting their continued growth. Second, we provided market makers and OTC desks with resilient pricing and risk infrastructure that continued to perform during periods of exceptional market stress, allowing them to monitor exposures, manage risk and maintain confidence in their decision-making.
Finally, despite a challenging market environment, we continued to innovate—expanding our quantitative infrastructure, growing our institutional client base, winning Hedgeweek’s Quantitative Trading Technology Provider of the Year award, and laying the foundations for the next generation of AI-assisted investment workflows.

3. What has been the most significant change you’ve observed in the global crypto industry in the past 12 months?

The most significant shift has been the industry’s evolution from a crypto-centric market to a broader digital asset ecosystem. The conversation is no longer just about cryptocurrencies or DeFi; it is increasingly centred on tokenised funds, deposits, money market instruments and real-world assets. Traditional exchanges are embracing 24/7 market models, while asset managers and banks are actively exploring on-chain infrastructure to improve efficiency, transparency and settlement. At the same time, crypto exchanges see tokenisation and RWAs as their next major growth opportunity. We believe this
convergence of traditional finance and digital assets will define the next phase of institutional markets. Having spent decades building quantitative infrastructure across FX and fixed income, followed by five years serving institutional participants in digital assets, we believe we’re uniquely positioned to help institutions navigate this transition.

4.What product or service innovation from the past 12 months are you most proud of?

Over the past year, we’ve focused on integrating the institutional derivatives workflow into a single quantitative platform. Rather than relying on multiple disconnected systems, clients can move seamlessly from market data and our advanced options backtester through pricing, portfolio risk management,monitoring and performance attribution using one consistent quantitative framework. This simplifies operations, strengthens governance and enables institutions to deploy progressively sophisticated derivatives strategies with greater confidence. As investment workflows become increasingly AI-assisted, trusted quantitative infrastructure will become even more critical to institutional decision-making.

5. Which are the most significant challenges facing the industry currently and what role can technology play in helping private markets professionals – in the front and/or back office – manage them?

The biggest challenge is no longer market access; it’s managing complexity. Institutions must process increasingly complex market data, price sophisticated derivatives, optimise margin requirements, monitor portfolio risk across multiple venues and demonstrate robust governance to clients and regulators. Institutional markets need more than workflow automation. They require a quantitative infrastructure layer that processes and enriches complex market data to support institutional-grade pricing, analytics, portfolio risk management and execution within a consistent decision-making framework. This provides the trusted foundation for financial institutions to automate and orchestrate increasingly sophisticated investment workflows, enabling investment professionals to harness AI agents while keeping human expertise, judgement and control at the centre of the investment process.
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Katia Babbar is CEO and Co-Founder of Immersive Finance, an institutional quantitative infrastructure platform serving hedge funds, asset managers, market makers and banks across digital assets and traditional markets. She has more than 25 years’ experience building quantitative analytics, derivatives technology and electronic trading platforms. Before founding Immersive Finance, Katia held senior leadership roles at Lloyds Banking Group, UBS and Citigroup, leading teams across quantitative research, derivatives analytics, electronic trading and FX market making. She has also served as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford and holds a PhD in Mathematical Finance from Imperial College London