Building Futures First's Risk Monitoring Dashboard

Rishal joined the central risk monitoring and control team at Futures First at a point where the team of ten was spending a significant portion of its time on manual Excel work: opening multiple spreadsheets, fetching data across files, writing formulas, and building macros just to get to the numbers that actually mattered. The research and risk analysis the team was hired to do was being crowded out by the mechanics of data handling.

He recognized that his technical background gave him an edge within the team and decided to use it. Using Python, Pandas, and the REST API of the firm's ISV platform (TT), he built a suite of internal risk monitoring tools that automated the data fetch, transformation, and analysis pipeline the team had been running manually.

The dashboard covered four core areas: trade reconciliation, open interest tracking, VAR modeling, and margin analytics. For reconciliation, a single click would match the firm's internal trade records against exchange fills, flagging any position discrepancies, fill mismatches, or pricing errors that could create P&L exposure. For margin analytics, a user could select a product class and branch and immediately see how margin was being consumed across the firm's network.

The tool was designed so that any team member could navigate it in a few clicks, without needing to understand the underlying code. When changes were required, Rishal handled the fixes directly. The time freed from manual data work was redirected to the market research and risk analysis that formed the core of the team's mandate.