Who stood out at the iFX EXPO International 2021?

The industry event produced by Ultimate Fintech is trusted by thousands of retail and institutional brokers, technology and liquidity providers, payment service providers, banks, affiliates, and IBs, regulators, and compliance as well as crypto and blockchain brands.

2021 has been a very fast-paced year. Many opportunities have arisen from the exploding retail and social trading momentum. It is a good time to be in this industry.

At the iFX EXPO International in Cyprus, we’ve covered X Open Hub’s Michał Copiuk, Tools for Brokers’ Baiana Kashaeva, Brokeree Solutions’ Anton Sokolov, Your Bourse’s Elina Pedersen, oneZero Financial Systems’ Louay Amhaz, Devexperts’ Denis Kozlov, TraderEvolution’s Roman Nalivayko, and Exclusive Capital Prime’s Peter Leonidou.

X Open Hub solution for brokers is “much beyond the white label”

We started off by speaking to Michal Copiuk, Chief Executive Officer at X Open Hub, the fintech arm of renowned brokerage firm XTB.

X Open Hub is a liquidity provider covering equities, indices, ETFs, Forex, and Cryptos, which offers technology solutions for brokers and banks.

The firm’s white label solution is “much beyond the white label” because clients are provided a sub-server hosted by the fintech, including the efficiency of feeds, DDoS security, and execution.

Interestingly, the firm’s servers in Europe are close to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which lists the stock market index DAX. The index is responsible for over 60% of turnover on the indices and very often about 50% of global turnover for European brokers, said Mr. Copiuk.

Michal Copiuk also highlighted the fintech has an “open environment” which allows clients to integrate third-party solutions, namely CRM and retention systems, with the fintech’s platform.

The firm’s mobile app solution’s brand is customizable according to clients’ wishes as it is a key feature for the onboarding and retention of users.

In regard to stock trading, X Open Hub features an automated notification system and stock scanners linked to Bloomberg and Reuters services, with everything accessible from the platform.

Small brokers looking to enter stock trading are covered by X Open Hub, which offers a DMA (leveraged trading) and synthetic stocks (rights are not passed on to users but it’s faster and cost-efficient). The firm also processes corporate actions.

In regard to cryptocurrencies, X Open Hub ensures liquidity integrated with all tools, including education and communities with chat and video options. The firm supports the most traded cryptos against the USD. The instruments are CFDs because they provide efficiency and speed of execution and are easier to manage from a regulatory perspective.

Tools for Brokers on to Crypto: MT4/MT5 liquidity bridge features Crypto Spot with access to Binance

It is impossible to ignore the role of the MetaTrader in FX trading, but integrating MT4 and MT5 seamlessly into a broker’s solution comes with many challenges. Tools for Brokers leads the way when it comes to MT4/MT5 liquidity bridge solutions.

We spoke to Baiana Kashaeva, Head of the Cyprus Office at Tools for Brokers, to get an update on what is new with the fintech firm.

One of the biggest news for T4B is that the firm has established connection with Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, to address the neverending interest from institutional and brokers.

The platform does provide access to Crypto CFD, but the fintech firm understands its competitive advantage is its Crypto Spot offering, which works better on MetaTrader 5, Ms. Kasheva explained. “Crypto CFD is not a problem, it is the standard, but spot products are harder to develop and integrate”.

Digital assets are new to most traders still and there are details that can move markets and cause unexpected issues for users, namely events such as hard forks and airdrops. There is much to gain but also risks for traders using CFD products.

Spot trading means users are holding the underlying asset, so they will get the reward. CFD positions can be tricky during an airdrop because of leverage, though.

Baiana Kasheeva also spoke about the firm’s development approach, which is mainly focused on automation so that brokers can use their time with other tasks such as marketing and sales. A statement to that is the firm’s recently launched auto hedging tool.

“This auto hedge mode which we also introduced this summer collects the predefined net volume of trades per symbol, and only if it exceeds the value (let’s say, 10 lots), it sends it to a specific aggregation pool with one order”, Ms. Kashaeva said. “The advantage is that the broker won’t send micro deals after every traders’ request, and therefore they reduce their costs at commission.

Brokeree Solutions enhanced flagship product for PAMM and social trading

We spoke to Anton Sokolov, Marketing Manager at Brokeree Solutions, who we met at iFX EXPO Dubai a few months ago. At the time, he explained the firm found strong demand for multi-server social trading services.

It is then no wonder that the firm keeps enhancing its flagship product. Brokeree has introduced a new rating system for its social trading and PAMM solution, which will help attract more clients to the service.

The trading industry starved for an iFX EXPO in Cyprus (the last event was pre-pandemic in 2019) and Brokeree sees that as an opportunity to expand its business further.

Brokeree has modernized its branding and website to make it easier for potential customers to explore the firm’s portfolio of products and services, including market connectivity like liquidity bridge and gateways as well as the abovementioned social trading and PAMM solutions that connect to MT4 and MT5. Its platform also helps set up money management systems and copy trading with ease.

Brokeree is specialized in solutions for MetaTrader, a household name within the FX industry, which sometimes leads to the question “Is MetaTrader overrated?”

Anton Sokolov’s answer is a definite “no”, with no doubt in his mind because of the powerful ecosystem MetaTrader boasts. If a broker wants to set up a new service, there are already several turnkey solutions to cover the broker’s needs, from liquidity to all kinds of integrations. “It’s great to see the platform striving in that sense”.

Your Bourse adds an alert system for suspicious activity to matching engine

Moving on to the Your Bourse booth, our Editor-In-Chief Nikolai Isayev spoke with co-CEO Elina Pedersen about the firm’s competitive advantage: the matching engine.

The engine is at the very core of the Your Bourse platform. It is a trade execution engine suitable for all financial instruments: spot FX, CFD’s, Crypto, Crypto spot, Stocks, Stock Indices, and Commodities.

The matching engine is an exchange-like technology where makers and takers can meet to exchange any asset class. On top of that, Your Bourse features an aggregation functionality, MT4 bridge and gateway, risk management, and reporting. All in one platform, so there is no need for other providers, Ms. Pedersen explained.

In regard to crypto, the technology is capable to run an exchange and multiple sources of liquidity in spot crypto, 24/7. How? Your Bourse runs an entity and a backup entity, thus no maintenance windows required.

So, what is new with Your Bourse? Elina Pedersen highlighted the launch of an alert system for brokers so they can detect suspicious activity on the account, track scalpers, set different parameters to see extra-large orders from the same IP or the same account, algo trading. “It provides a lot more overview of what is going on in the system”.

The co-CEO of Your Bourse also explained how the firm interacts with clients in order to come up with a tailor-made solution, starting by analyzing the customer’s business model to identify what would make the life of the broker easier.

All executives in the Your Bourse team have been on the other side, working in retail brokerages, which provides them the required insight to be able to match clients’ needs so the product “fits 100% and there’s no need for other solutions”.

oneZero enhanced data analytics capabilities

FinanceFeeds’ Nikolai Isayev then spoke to Louay Amhaz, Director of Business Development at oneZero with a focus on Europe and the MENA region.

oneZero has recently celebrated its 10th-anniversary serving brokers, banks, and LPs. The firm’s Hub, formerly known as Liquidity Hub, can connect to multiple trading platforms and liquidity providers for multi-asset purposes, including FX, CFDs, cash equities, futures, cryptocurrencies. The fintech firm’s full solution integrates market data, banks, vendors, clearing, and crypto exchanges.

The emergence of the crypto asset class has led the trading industry to figure out how to add a competitive, secure, capable, and stable offering to its clients. oneZero has come up with a connectivity solution for brokers looking to enter the space.

Mr. Amhaz also explained the fintech’s Data Source: DNA product helps firms secure best execution, compliant with strict regulatory requirements such as the RTS 27.

The cloud-based solution stores customers’ quote and trade data which can then be transformed into meaningful analytics that facilitates the relationship between consumers and providers of liquidity. The data lake is stored on the AWS cloud.

The Boston-headquartered provider of multi-asset class enterprise trading technology for retail brokers, wholesale brokers, banks, and LPs currently serves more than 250 customers.

Its platform comprises three components – Hub, EcoSystem, and Data Source – and together, they provide a complete solution for trading technology, distribution, and analytics.

Devexperts adds virtual assistant for traders to trading technology suite

By the end of Day 1 of iFX Expo, we’ve noticed a high demand for trading platforms with true multi-asset functionality. The market is ready to transform from CFD-style of trading to offering various asset classes within a single platform including stocks, derivatives, cryptos in both trading types (marginal and spot).

Enter Devexperts, a renowned provider of financial software for brokerages, exchanges, and wealth management firms, which has developed trading technology suitable for the abovementioned asset classes.

We spoke to Denis Kozlov, VP of Business Development at Devexperts, who is at the iFX EXPO presenting the firm’s most recent launches, which include a turnkey solution for brokers to introduce a reliable crypto offering.

Mr. Kozlov also spoke about Devexa, a virtual assistant for traders, which can educate itself on their preferences and markets they trade on.

“There’s always a niche for solutions that simplify the life of traders. Today you won’t impress anyone by offering just an instant-support chatbot that helps with account login or money deposit or withdrawal. It should be something more complex, a channel to talk directly with thousands of your traders”, he said.

In simple words, Devexa analyzes traders’ requests and provides them with news relevant to those traders specifically, adding a personal touch to the service provided by their broker.

TraderEvolution to add fractional shares and new mobile app in busiest year ever

We caught up with TraderEvolution on Day 2 of the conference, which is the first the fintech participates in this year.

Roman Nalivayko, chief executive at the professional white label trading software provider for prime brokers and banks, said prospective clients were surprised to learn what is actually available behind that black GUI similar to many others.

The end-to-end brokerage solution incorporates a back-end and a full set of front-end trading platforms with a wide range of market connectivities, covering equities, futures, options, FX, CFDs, fixed income, and crypto (both physical and crypto CFDs).

With mobile trading now being the main interface in retail business, thus a key part of meeting trader expectations, TraderEvolution has released the Portfolio Management module.

“The investor’s interface of this module is closely integrated with our trading app, which simplifies operations for brokers and allows end-users to have two accounts – one is for self-trading and the second one is managed – and easily work with both of them from the same app”, Mr. Nalivayko explained.

Besides the several new signed clients this year, the firm also partnered and integrated with TradingView, a move that “gives a huge advantage for our clients that can offer now the TradingView interface to their clients not only for analysis but also for trading”, he commented, adding that the integration shows that the firm puts the interest of clients first and doesn’t limit them to their proprietary front ends.

2021 was probably the busiest year for TraderEvolution, but that is no reason to slow things down just now. The firm has plans to release a number of new features until the end of the year, including fractional trading, a new mobile app, new widgets with fundamental data, and a few more surprises.

Exclusive Capital Prime adds crypto to liquidity, technology, and research offering

We caught up with Peter Leonidou, the chief sales officer at Exclusive Capital Prime, a boutique private investment house that offers a truly multi-asset trading environment for both individuals and organizations.

Peter, who is in charge of all institutional side of things at Exclusive Capital, said his company offers a range of services to help professional traders experience a more personal and carefully curated level of financial services.

More specifically, Exclusive Capital offers institutional clients a full suite of liquidity solutions, technology stack, and research. This offering is intended for a client segment that includes mid-sized hedge funds, retail brokers, family offices, and other buy-side institutions‎. ‎

Thanks to the fact that most of Exclusive Capital’s products are developed in-house, they can provide clients with scaled solutions tailored to their needs. Onboarding of clients runs very smoothly through hands-on management that takes charge on all fronts.

Explaining further, Leonidou said they mainly help professional clients and institutions find stable liquidity, keep their business slim and the majority of its aspects automated. This model helps keep the cost-base down and allows them to pass on savings to customers.

On the trading front, Exclusive Capital delivers access to the world’s most popular markets, including FX, commodities, ETFs, stocks, indices, amongst other asset classes.

Exclusive Capital’s portfolio also includes a cryptocurrency solution, and the company says it has become one of its most sought-after products. With 45 crypto CFDs, the company embraces the growing industry shift towards cryptocurrencies and caters to the institutional demand for a regulated exposure to the digital asset market.