Exclusive: AI initiative aimed at retail brokerages goes live, with Tal Zohar on the board. This is how it works

Ingenuity and continual research and development are critical components of the electronic trading industry, and thus, the senior figures which demonstrate their abilities in generating the state of the art methods by which the global markets are now tradable by retail clients can take heart in that most of today’s sophisitcation is down to exactly that will to improve and progress.

This week, FinanceFeeds spoke to ArtuData’s Commercial Director Ben Stern, who explained his perspective on how retail brokerages can reduce their costs by using a fully-intuitive marketing system that has been designed with electronic trading companies in mind.

Ingenuity and continual research and development are critical components of the electronic trading industry, and thus, the senior figures which demonstrate their abilities in generating the state of the art methods by which the global markets are now tradable by retail clients can take heart in that most of today’s sophisitcation is down to exactly that will to improve and progress.

Tal Zohar is indeed a senior executive of such calibre. His three-year tenure at evergreen London-based retail trading giant IG Group as Global Business Development Officer and member of the company’s management team was preceded by advisory capacity to the Israel Securities Authority on how to regulate retail FX.

Having left IG Group earlier this year to join London Stock Exchange’s ELITE division, where he is Head of ELITE Connect and a member of the ELITE management team, Mr Zohar’s current senior position within one of the world’s most renowned electronic listed derivatives executing venues and reference points for publicly listed blue chip companies is to support private and public companies connecting with capital using the digital technology.

In the advent of the launch of the new AI initiative, FinanceFeeds spoke in detail to Mr Zohar with regard to his most recent venture, and can reveal that Artudata, which was founded in London as an Artificial Intelligence “AI” start-up, is set to go live.

Mr Zohar is a board member at ArtuData, which was established with the intention of boosting marketing and sales of retail financial services companies, with focus on brokers.

Today, FinanceFeeds spoke to Ben Stern, ArtuData’s Commercial Director for the APAC region, who was previously Head of Sales for IG Group’s APAC division and was responsible for all the sales in a region that generated £120m a year.

“We are in the midst of a revolution which is impacting humankind in the same way that fire did for the cavemen or the wheel did for transport, fuelling the industrial revolution. Welcome to the Knowledge Revolution!” said Mr Stern.

“The last decade has been all about the digital age coming to fruition complimented by the mobile era. Believe it or not, just over ten years ago, the world’s largest corporations didn’t even have a website yet today, it’s absolutely crucial in how companies communicate with their targeted audience. Companies need a powerful digital footprint, website, strong social media and mobile presence just to survive.” – Ben Stern, Commercial Director APAC, ArtuData

The Knowledge Revolution began around five years ago and it is already shaping our daily lives – most of us aren’t even aware of it. However, unlike the Digital Revolution which has impacted business of all shapes and sizes, it is the AI computing tools of the Knowledge Revolution that have only been accessible by the large corporations.” he said.

Mr Stern’s perspective on full automation of the financial services sector is that “Artificial-Intelligence (AI) empowered eBay to predict what we should buy before we know it. Facebook tells us who should be on our friends list and what our interests should be. LinkedIn tells us what our next job could be. Google predicts what we are searching for. Waze decides how we travel and much more. Banks decide who receives a loan. Governments predict who will commit a crime. Cars makers predict who could be involved in an accident and hospitals use AI to decide who is at risk of contracting a disease and how they should be treated. The message is clear.”

“The business’ outcome is clear” he enthused. “Organizations using cognitive AI tools have been growing both in strength and impact whilst most SME’s underperform and simply struggle compete.”

“We believe that SMEs should have a fair opportunity to grow, and in this Knowledge era, businesses need AI! The playing field is evolving and we are working tirelessly to give SMEs the chance to regain their competitive advantage and the best part about it is that the more businesses that join, the more powerful the AI becomes. Our AI is cognitive and is constantly learning, making this an integral part of how we are able to instantly identify opportunity and real value.” Ben Stern, Commercial Director APAC, ArtuData

“With various requests from potential clients coming through, one stand-out result that comes to mind involved a medium sized regulated retail broker which implemented the ArtuData Target product. Within 4 months their marketing team has generated additional profits of £620,000 per month (a 14% increase) on previous performance, whilst their cost base remains the same.” Mr. Stern explained to FinanceFeeds

How was that achieved?

Mr Stern explained that prior to commencing its partnership with ArtuData, “the brokerage had conveyed that it took their marketing analysts 4-6 months to understand the real ROI from a new marketing channel. All the while, the firm kept spending money on that channel. Four months ago, the company had completed the swift integration with ArtuData to enable their teams to predict the quality of each channel, yielding solid results within a week with the data and results strengthening over time.

The results clearly showed that most the traffic that they had been generating had been weak not what they were seeking. The mandate was simple, identify users or prospects that will generate revenue which is greater than the cost of acquisition. This was achieved through close collaboration with the brokerage firm in order tailor the ArtuData solution to their needs which involved terminating around 10% of existing marketing channels which were causing major losses to the company or negative ROI.

Thereafter, further changes were made as a result of the ArtuData AI such as renegotiating about 20% of the marketing channels which were predicted to underperform or breakeven, adjusting and strengthening the CPA to the predicted revenue or ROI, re-pricing around 10% of current channels and terminating an addition 7%.

To round off, the brokerage undertook increasing their spend of 3% in order to gain share-of-voice on high quality channels.

The ArtuData software empowered this particular company to gain instant insight into their marketing initiatives, significantly increase their on-boarding of newer and more relevant channels (an increase of 30%). The AI technology enabled them to make swift decisions on whether to maintain or re-price or suspend further activity on any given channel whilst the AI recommends alternative high value sources to increase performance.

According to Mr. Stern, “it is important to note that the AI is constantly learning and adapting in order to maximise and bring true value at a low cost. The company also integrated the ArtuData Attract solution which is designed to re-engineer and improve re-remarketing and client retention.”

In today’s retail FX sector, the cost of acquiring and maintaining clients is vital, and indeed self-learning technology is inevitably one of the tools which will resolve this and help brokerages to retain their competitive edge.