Transparency in the FX industry: AvaTrade responds to FinanceFeeds research

One of the key aspects of detailed research within all sectors of the FX industry that is performed by quality FX industry news sources is the increased transparency between B2B partners, this being a very central part of FinanceFeeds ethos globally.

This morning, FinanceFeeds reported that the affiliate marketing department of European division within retail FX brokerage AvaTrade had made an attempt to onboard strategic partners and affiliates by way of an email circular which bashed a small, Cyprus-based brokerage, cast doubt over the business environment in Cyprus and also made negative references to the broker in question’s service provider.

To read the full account, click here.

As a result of FinanceFeeds having brought this to the attention of senior management at AvaTrade, at the company’s head office in Ireland, the company has addressed the matter at board level and has taken mitigating steps in order to minimize impact on any affiliate networks.

The company today addressed its affiliate network, denouncing the initial communication, as follows:

Dear Partner,

Yesterday you received an email in which one of our representatives informed you about rumors about a competitor StockSTP, a client of Leverate Financial Services Limited.

This mail does not reflect in any way the opinion of the AvaTrade Group, which has always strived to maintain its mission and policy to act as a regulated and respectable broker, this applies to our competitors, customers, & partners.

We apologize on behalf of AvaTrade and hope to continue working together.

In a telephone conversation today between a senior executive at AvaTrade and FinanceFeeds, it was conveyed that the company does not support the type of competition-bashing that had been perpetrated in the initial communication to affiliates.

The member of senior management explained to FinanceFeeds “The email sent by one of our Affiliate Managers does not reflect the opinions of AvaTrade and we do not seek to compete with other Brokers in this manner. As a side point the email was not sent to a Database but rather a small list of partners that the Affiliate Manager was in contact with, and we are shortly issuing a formal apology to that same list.”

Affiliates are of very significant value to AvaTrade, its roots being firmly planted in the affiliate marketing sector, as defined in FinanceFeeds original article today on the matter.

This response represents the professional method of dealing with an internal and potentially damaging matter, and although competition-bashing is a rare occurrence in this business, demonstrates greater mettle than some of the other firms that have taken this line in order to attempt to onboard clients.

In the case of OANDA Corporation’s similar diatribe in the aftermath of FXCM’s high profile exit from many regions apart from China where it flourishes, when FinanceFeeds approached OANDA Corporation’s at the time newly instigated CEO Vatsa Narasimha in order to reproach the company with regard to its vulgar attempt to jump on a competitor rather than demonstrate its value proposition, the firm upheld its stance right through the ranks of all operational sectors spoken to by FinanceFeeds.

On this basis, FinanceFeeds continues to maintain that a genuine business environment should be paramount among all aspects of the industry, whether it be the conduct of news and research portals, banks with their last-look execution procedures on single dealer platforms, affiliate marketers with regard to intellectual property, and of course retail brokerages competing for market share in the MT4 white label arena in which over 1230 similar offerings exist.

There is no excuse for infantile misconduct, and thankfully it is usually only expected of one-man-band entities in remote, irrelevant geographical regions, and therefore FinanceFeeds considers this to be an upstanding outcome by one of the larger retail FX brokerages.