WOW! The platform revolution hots up as your brokerage can head directly for Millennials

There has been much dialog, but not much action with regard to the evolution of retail trading platforms in recent years.

For many brokerages, relying on the status quo which represents an unholy alliance between third party vendor MetaQuotes, thereby disabling a broker from owning its own client base or infrastructure and becoming subservient to an affiliate marketing platform rather than empowered by a multi-faceted trading platform, remains.

It’s not every day that a new trading platform is released, however as the maturity of the retail FX industry increases, the demand for sophisticated, highly complex platform technology has had to keep up with the increasing demand of experienced traders, however one particular company which has paid close attention to ensuring technological strength for brokerages is simplified platform provider Tradesmarter, which has released its new latest version of WOW Trader platform along with built in AI Assistant.

One important matter which has often been overlooked in the third party platform sector is the need to engage the next generation of traders, and ensure that the trading environment not only appeals to them in order that brokerages can attract new clients as the existing client base moves on, be that due to long term sustainability or to counteract the current dynamic relating to relatively short customer lifetime values and saturated client bases, but also retain the younger generation of trader in order that they continue to view retail electronic trading platforms as part of their everyday interaction with other popular platforms used for day to day life by the Millennial generation and Generation Z, those born in the mid 1990s.

FinanceFeeds has attended numerous meetings with brokerage senior executives across the globe, all of whom understand the value and importance of going down the multi-asset product expansion route, and almost all of whom understand the clear virtues of having a bespoke user interface which engenders a loyal customer base, enables brokers to own the entire intellectual property base of its business – which let’s face it is why entrepreneurs start businesses in the first place – and offer differentiating services to specific audiences.

For this reason, Tradesmarter has produced a platform which has a personalization engine which allows brokers to customize it to suit their business requirements, thus giving them the ability engage with the client with the respect of his real interest and in real time the way they configure it with a strong focus on 2 way messaging rather than general notification without a context.

Additionally, the platform has been designed to keep the user interface clear and simple, which is very much in keeping with the method by which many new age app-based financial services providers and challenger banks operate their user interfaces. The idea, according to Tradesmarter, is to keep it simple at the front end, but maintain an advanced interaction between the broker’s own LP and platform settings at the broker side.

The platform can be sent as a link or share on WhatsApp, which is very important when looking at the behaviour of many people under the age of 35, many of whom use this type of sharing on lifestyle platforms such as TripAdvisor, or finding their way to good restaurants or venues on Google Maps. Gone are the days when a tourist would use even a search on Google. Nowadays, clicking “like” on TripAdvisor sets up an entire list of places to go for all purposes, as well as customer reviews to back them up.

Understanding the way younger clientele interact with online resources is therefore vital for many parts of the trading platforms such as easy onboarding, face enabled login, chat messaging, with support and complexity and fuss is definitely out, whereas ergonomics is most certainly in.

Tradesmarter explained to FinanceFeeds that the new platform allows brokers to notify traders with dramatic market movement and breaking news based on the traders’ asset interest and past activity all via AI Assistant and advanced personalisation and notifications system, which also alludes to the interactive method by which many now use applications.

It is not just a technology and functionality matter either.

Onboarding, attracting and retaining clients is now one of the biggest challenges for brokers as the FX industry matures and as CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) which is a major factor within an online advertising model to grow higher, averaging $1000 per funded client in western countries.

To tackle the issue, some of the smaller retail brokers to whom cost of acquisition and retention is extremely important, have been ever more active in developing their differentiation angle via various means, ranging from promoting the social trading experience to offering deposit bonuses and cash rebates, as well as loyalty programs and interactive marketing campaigns, while automating data intelligence for the sales teams.

On that note, legacy trading platforms such as MetaTrader 4 may pose an issue given that the ubiquitous trading platform acts both as a key facet with which to onboard clients and as a retention problem, becoming one of the main criteria when choosing a broker to open an account with, which also means those brokers risk being easily substituted following a minor incident or an aggressive marketing campaign by a competitor. Thus, it is vital that the obsolete model is now challenged by proper FinTech firms and not also-rans who look at trading platforms down the wrong end of the telescope, as affiliate marketing tools in the way that MetaQuotes does.

Given the high CPA costs that exist today, many brokers cannot afford the risk of converting clients only to see them leaving in a heartbeat, as such low client lifetime value can push smaller brokers out of business.

The new WOW Trader therefore allows brokers to be master of their own destiny, rather than servants of their platform vendor.