Finance Magnates spoke with Tickmill’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sudhanshu Agarwal, who helped clarify the relationship between Tickmill and Armada Markets, the Estonian-based broker which exited the retail foreign exchange (FX) market back in January.
Following Armada Markets' exodus from the retail market, the broker opted for a purely institutional offering, opting to offload its retail clients to an offshore entity. Consequently, Tickmill secured the company’s book earlier this year – however, despite the transfer of clients, Tickmill has not maintained any ties to Armada Markets.
According to Mr. Agarwal, “Tickmill acquired the clients of Armada Markets as of January 2015 and employed some of the company’s staff to ensure that these clients had as seamless a transition as possible. That is the extent of the connection between the companies.”
Tickmill is an independent business – we build our own brand identity and pursue our own vision
Indeed, “Tickmill is an independent business – we build our own brand identity and pursue our own vision of becoming the preferred broker in terms of quality of trading services and excellent customer experience. Managing change is generally very hard, but we have been fortunate enough that most of the team is well equipped to manage this and the results are speaking for themselves,” he added.
Sudhanshu Agarwal, CEO, Tickmill
Acquiring a broker’s client book is seldom an easy or speedy operation, namely as the needs of clients are always a top priority and clarification and stability come at a premium. “We employed some of Armada’s customer support staff during the transition process. Their old management team was also available to assist us with the transition during the initial months.”
“Today, almost eight months after acquiring Armada’s clients, we can say with confidence that they trust us and are willing to refer other traders to Tickmill. So, slowly but surely we are getting the message out there that Tickmill is a broker who provides the most favorable trading conditions and is constantly working towards improving its offering by listening to feedback from the clients,” Mr. Agarwal reiterated.
Shifting gears slightly, Mr. Agarwal touched on the state of Tickmill’s business in Africa, as well as globally in 2015. Earlier this year he discussed in length with Finance Magnates the broker’s Contracts-For-Difference (CFD) offering and its consequent launch.
As such, nearly four months into the new offering, “Business has been great. We have been growing and CFDs have helped us add close to 20% to our bottom line. There has been a lot of demand from traders who are interested in trading the commodities like Gold and WTI Oil and indices like the US500, UK100, DE30 and HK50. Seeking to meet our clients’ expectations, we launched these instruments in the Q1 2015.”
CFDs have seen their popularity swell recently, especially as they have begun to become a staple of all retail broker offerings worldwide. “Over the past three months, we have seen record deposits from clients with each month surpassing the other. Now with the Volatility returning to the market, we are hoping that these astute clients who have made the deposits are going to take advantage of the market conditions,” noted Mr. Agarwal.
Our main goal is to expand geographically and build a brand that everyone recognizes as an industry leader who wants its traders to succeed
Looking ahead, the return of volatility to markets has been a catalyst for growth and interest in several trading instruments. Building off of the staunch growth earlier this year in its CFDs trading, Mr. Agarwal helped provide a snapshot into H2 2015 and beyond.
Ultimately, “I see the business growing even further. Our main goal is to expand geographically and build a brand that everyone recognizes as an industry leader who wants its traders to succeed. Obviously, improving our services and product offerings is another major aim that has not changes since day one. We are constantly looking for better ways to meet our traders' needs.”
In particular, Tickmill has targeted bigger clients as a growth module, having recently launched a new VIP account reward. According to Mr. Agarwal, “The VIP account rewards our bigger clients as well as started providing a VPS service that enables traders to access their Trading Platform at any time and from any place.”
