This year’s FX-Markets Asia Award for Best FX Aggregator goes to smartTrade in recognition of its LiquidityFX solution. With offices in each major trading centers (London, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Milan, Geneva), and headquarters in the South of France, smartTrade offers easy to implement end-to-end solutions suited to all FX Market participant however small or large. The LiquidityFX platform is a multi asset class solution, supporting a wide array of instruments such as FX Spot, Forwards, Swaps, Precious Metals, NDF, Cryptocurrencies, and Money Markets instruments alongside Fixed Income.
LiquidityFX is an end-to-end solution dedicated to the FX needs of banks, the buy-side, brokers, payment providers, and corporations. The platform combines aggregation with the ability to intelligently manage both local and external resting orders. It supports a combination of different types of currencies, order & strategy types, and price tiering. Providing clients access to over 130 liquidity providers, LiquidityFX contains all the necessary tools required to Smart Order Route orders, execute trading strategies, manage risk, margins, and distribute the liquidity to all liquidity consumers. As David Vincent, Chief Executive Officer of smartTrade explains, “smartTrade doesn’t stop at aggregating liquidity, we help clients manage their distribution and make money out of it.”
What makes the solution particularly attractive to clients is that it is flexible and tailored to their specific needs, but comes with a flat fee pricing model, which is what sets them apart from their competitors. The benefits of the flat and predictable pricing model for clients means that their costs don’t go up as their trading volumes grow. LiquidityFX continues to gain new clients because people are now looking to move away from inflexible legacy platforms into modern flexible ones and non-volume based price solutions.
smartTrade’s offering goes beyond aggregation – the platform includes a whole suite of tools to manage risk, price and distribute liquidity to the banks’ clients. David explains “Banks are fighting to retain their corporate franchise and remain relevant to their customers through offering ever-growing range of products. We support them in those goals. Meanwhile, we relieve the banks from the burden of operating the system; smartTrade manages, colocated into world leading data centers.”
smartTrade has invested heavily in the Asian markets and is committed to continuous growth in the region, becoming a strategic technology partner for both buy-side and sell-side institutions. Clients in Asia want access to more sophisticated features like margin credit and pre-trade risk, which are fully integrated in the LiquidityFX aggregation system. With their colocation, smartTrade is able to offer local as well as remote support, using a “follow the sun” model. Their local presence really reflects their commitment to existing clients, helping to ensure they give them the best service possible in all types of situations. The system also enables end clients to trade larger amounts, leveraging on their cash margin while their brokers are able to monitor the transactions and manage their risk in real time. The platform can automatically raise warnings, cease trades or closeout client positions, depending on their level of risk exposure.
Clients are always looking for better ways to ensure best liquidity and best execution, and LP relationships are at the heart of this. David describes how “smartTrade’s end-to-end solution makes for harmonious relationships between LPs and downstream banks. As we facilitate not only aggregation but Smart-Order routing and distribution, we allow banks to curate the type, quality and volume of flows that are matched with their LPs.” He notes that trading volumes across Asia are continuing to grow, encouraged by initiatives such as MAS pushing to establish Singapore as a Forex Hub. And so smartTrade is making sure they have the tools to trade regional instruments such as NDFs, NDss, FX Options, Cryptocurrencies, in line with market practices.
smarTrade’s robust and scalable technology that is capable of managing large amounts of data is at the core of their business and their offerings. Regular stress tests ensure that the platform is resilient even under the most volatile of conditions. When COVID-19 hit at the beginning of 2020, smartTrade was able to continue offering the same level of service to their clients, leveraging their large connectivity stack and powerful aggregation network.
As we come to the end of 2020, smartTrade is looking forward to another busy 12 months ahead as they continue to automate their platform in order to continue supporting their customers, and helping them maximize their profits. David explains that such plans include facilitating increased internalization rates using smart skew, spreads, and hedging algos; more sophisticated execution, market making and margining algorithmic capabilities; additional options types, models, and hedging strategies; all of which will be supported by analytics that turn clients data into actionable insights.