The London-based financial technology company Appital announced significant growth in its peer-to-peer price discovery and liquidity platform for asset managers. The company said its platform liquidity reached $800 million notional value in November 2023 alone.
It has seen $300 million in notional value traded on a single day in December so far. This is up from $200 million traded between August 2022 and August 2023. In total, the platform reached the threshold of $2 billion in its first three months of operation.
Appital Platform Gains Traction, Reaching $2 Billion in Buy-Side Liquidity
According to the press release shared with Finance Magnates, 32 asset managers with $15 trillion in assets under management (AUM) have signed up to use Appital's platform. Another 55 asset managers with a combined $30 trillion AUM are in the process of onboarding.
The increased adoption follows the launch of Appital Insights in September 2023, which lets buy-side firms assess the viability of executing larger equity orders without alerting the wider market. The average daily volumes of the newly launched service ranged between 20% and 60% during Q4 2023, and the average notional value of each opportunity within Appital Insights was $18 million.
"The significant traction we have within the asset management community validates the need for our offering, as our technology addresses the industry's key pain points," Mark Badyra, the CEO of Appital, commented.
The key pain points include accessing hard-to-find liquidity and executing multiple days' worth of average daily trading volumes without risking price erosion.
The company has integrated its technology with electronic trading platforms like Flextrade and Portware to allow clients to access Appital's liquidity opportunities directly in their existing workflows.
Capital said it plans to expand integrations and its buy-side user community in 2024. It aims to "fully unlock the potential" of peer-to-peer liquidity sourcing for institutional investors. "We look forward to continuing our collaborations, partnerships and integrations," Brian Guckian, the Chief Business Development Officer at Appital, concluded.
Last year, Appital and Turquoise, owned by LSEG, launched a collaborative platform called Appital Turquoise BookBuilder. Its aim is to help institutional investors in search of liquidity.
How Appital Insights Work
Appital Insights helps buy-side institutions to access liquidity discreetly, empowering traders and portfolio managers to assess the viability of executing larger-than-normal orders without alerting the broader market.
Specifically, the tool provides automated feedback on current positions and the likelihood of finding matching orders (contras) to execute the trade fully. This empowers the buy-side traders to gain confidence that they can successfully complete these larger block orders before they submit the trades.
Additionally, Appital Insights identifies liquidity events in relevant stocks that align with predetermined volume or pricing thresholds preset by the traders. This means they can gain visibility into potential opportunities that align with their interests again before placing any orders.
By revealing this previously hard-to-access liquidity intelligence, Appital Insights enables buy-side firms to pursue block trade execution with much less information leakage or price impact risk than their standard practices.
