Exclusive: Finalto’s Paul Groves on becoming a true worldwide provider of pricing and technology
Finalto, the provider of B2B solutions for brokers, has recently announced the expansion of its offering into the New York-based liquidity pool and data centre, NY4, with Singapore’s SG3 to be added later this year.
The announcement sent ripples across the trading industry, as the trading technology and liquidity provider will be able to better serve its over 600 clients, from more than 80 countries, spanning retail brokers, banks, hedge funds, professional traders, and asset managers.
The connectivity expansion into NY4 and SG3 will also open up opportunities for both sell-side and buy-side firms as the sizable move puts Finalto further ahead from its competition.
In order to ascertain the added value of NY4 and SG3 into Finalto’s offering, FinanceFeeds spoke with Paul Groves, Head of Sales at Finalto Europe.
Paul Groves has been with the firm since 2010, when it was called CFH Clearing. Since the rebranding to Finalto, he’s been running sales teams that cover liquidity, risk management, and 360 technology sales.
Finalto has added connectivity from NY4 and will soon add SG3. How much of a milestone is it for Finalto and its clients?
The route we have taken in adding NY4 as a data centre, followed by SG3 in a few months time, underlines our ambitions on a Global scale. With the addition of these data centres, we have reached a new milestone which allows us to call ourselves a true worldwide provider of pricing and technology.
Finalto won the Best B2B Liquidity Provider award at FMLS 2022. This was before the expansion of connectivity into NY4 and SG3. You weren’t satisfied with the success you already had?
No, we are never satisfied, and we never take awards for granted. Finalto winning an award
will spur on the competition to evaluate their products and services and try and be better than us. The upside in this equation is hopefully everyone’s clients receive a better service over a course of time. Our aim is to keep improving, gaining more clients and winning more awards on merit.
Finalto plans to introduce a concurrent disaster recovery mechanism. What does it mean?
We have just had a two day session with our technology team in Copenhagen discussing this topic. The introduction of the data centres is being done in phases. The end game for us is to have a robust business continuity infrastructure should we see an outage in one of the centres. We are looking at the best possible options for an efficient transfer of the clients trading should any issue occur.
At FMLS 2022, you told FinanceFeeds’s Nikolai Isayev that risk management will remain the top priority for the trading industry in 2023. What can Finalto do to help brokers in that regard?
Finalto adds value in various areas of Risk Management. We offer the basics of a strong balance sheet, valuable market experience, advanced risk based technology plus a sensible view of risk management that makes us a compelling partner to work with. Q4 2022 was very challenging for a lot of brokers. I think it’s fair to say the brokers that worked with us were navigated in a professional manner through the quarter and have come out the other side.
What does Finalto have in store for 2023?
The focus is very much on the aforementioned data centres in NY4 and SG3. We will carry on with listening to clients’ needs in terms of liquidity and technology and do our best to help. We are also looking to be more innovative going forward. We have a group of very outward thinking people and we plan to continue to use all our assets to enhance our offering in the coming months and years.
Finalto’s comprehensive B2B offering enables retail brokers to license its proprietary trading platform, CRM software, back-office and business-intelligence systems, and use its exclusive liquidity technology providing retail brokers with multi-asset execution, prime brokerage services, liquidity and trading tools.
