The electronic communications network (ECN) for foreign exchange trading FastMatch has sent out a notification to its clients that the company is reducing a number of fees it has been charging to its clients. In an aggressive push consisting of two complementary steps, the company is looking to expand its market share.
A year after the Swiss National Bank shock hit FastMatch due to its close association with FXCM Inc (NYSE:FXCM), both companies have recovered market share. Moreover, Fastmatch has pioneered a mandatory symmetrical last look practice on its ECN, which could be a key step to retain and attract new clients.
We had a tremendously positive response from our market makers to the symmetric last look check
Looking at the details of the pricing move, FastMatch is going to implement a number of fee reductions from the 1st of March, 2016. Clients will be paying $1.50 per million of notional volume, while all clients which are trading more than $2 billion of notional average daily volume (ADV) will be trading for free on all volume above $3 billion notional ADV on the FastMatch anonymous ECN.
In addition, all market makers that trade with everyone and fill 100 per cent will be trading for free. FastMatch has also decided to eliminate most of the port fees it has been charging clients. These include fees on FIX and binary market making ports. FastMatch also dropped the $3,000 charge for every 10 ports block for binary order entry ports.
Commenting on the introduction of the mandatory symmetrical last look policy, the CEO of FastMatch Dmitri Galinov stated: “We had a tremendously positive response from our market makers to the symmetric last look check we introduced. Many of our clients told us that they see FastMatch as a visionary in transparency and welcomed the change. We do not expect to lose any market makers as a result of this change.”
The statement coincides with the feedback from the industry on the changes introduced by FastMatch to the last look practice that are an industry game changer. The company has become the first ECN to require all of the Liquidity providers to the venue to adhere to a symmetrical last look policy after an announcement in December last year.
