X Financial Solutions today announced new collaborations with four key partners in the forex technology industry who have committed to offer their trading solutions through the X Open Hub environment.
This confirmation closely follows a recent announcement that several new providers had also committed to integrate their own technology through X Open Hub following relationships cemented at the Forex Magnates IFXEXPO in Cyprus in May.
In terms of these particular strategic alliances, trading tools provider MT4i will look to develop a bespoke, fully integrated platform within the X Open Hub environment, which will promote MT4i’s B2B trading tools designed to help brokers attract, convert and retain traders by providing advanced trading tools and access to user configurable news and information in multiple languages.
Technology Quartet
Speaking on behalf of MT4i, the firm’s Business Development Partner John Morris said:“We welcome the opportunity to partner with X Open Hub and this partnership will also enable us to progress our strategy of providing high quality tools and services to the FX Broking and investment community, on a cross-platform basis.”
Additionally, provider of plugins and Liquidity bridge solutions Tools4Brokers has recently started to apply its FX technology knowledge to different trading platforms. In a corporate statement relating to the firm’s alliance with X Financial Solutions, Elina Bagautdinova, Tools4Brokers Executive Director commented: “It is a pleasure for us to become a software provider for the platform that is eager to open up new horizons for forex brokerages”.
Furthermore, low-latency automated news Trading Platform provider Robotero is the third company of the four to announce its collaboration with X Financial Solutions.
Piotr Gabryś, co-founder of Robotero said of the new alliance: "We have agreed a win-win partnership with X Open Hub because it offers a friendly API-based integration environment and also gives us a marketing advantage by making our platform available to all brokers and investors adopting X Open Hub.”
“We provide technology for boosting brokers' operational metrics (new accounts, number of transactions and trading volume) by enabling investors to define and execute automated event-driven strategies based on Reuters real-time feed of macroeconomic data. Through this new partnership with X Open Hub retail traders will gain access to technology that was reserved only for institutional investors, until now" concluded Mr Gabryś.”
Finally, TradeEscort.com, a firm which currently creates an integrated version of the well-known automated AgenaTrader platform, incorporating their charting and trader tools facilities has also partnered with x Financial Solutions.
The key features of AgenaTrader are based on semi-automated setup and trade management components, integrated risk-/money management with automated order sizing. This enables traders to fell trading decisions very fast and reduce the error rate. The drag & drop condition/strategy assembly component and the extremely powerful real-time scanner are further highlights of AgenaTrader.
Technological Agnosticity
Partnering with reputed forex technology providers further reinforces the currently astonishing rate at which technology companies are vying for connectivity, along with the growing shift toward unrestricted, open trading environments for technology providers, forex brokerages and their clients.
Juan Jutgla, Director of Institutional Business,
X Financial Solutions
Juan Jutgla, Director of Institutional Business at X Financial Solutions said: “The idea is to let our technology and liquidity partners market their products and solutions using our technology as a foundation.”
“We are not charging our partners anything to join X Open Hub, and we are not asking for any rebates from liquidity providers. Everyone is invited to integrate and promote their own solutions with a strong trading engine and back office tools supporting the environment. Our concept of an open environment goes far beyond offering applications for brokers and traders through xStore.pro, it helps our partners push their own proprietary platforms, apps or liquidity, while setting their own parameters for how they charge their clients. The open concept also removes any limitation for future development for our partners”.
Malgorzata Kozak, Head of xAPI and xStore.pro summarised: “We are very excited to be forming a relationship with these well-known technology providers and hope that it is only the beginning of many more important partnerships to come.”
“Our philosophy is to be the Android of the forex and CFD trading world, joining forces with top developers to deliver the most comprehensive and dynamic trading environment possible for brokerages and their end users” concluded Ms. Kozak.
Custom vs Proprietary – The Debate Continues
At this year's IFXEXPO in Cyprus, Forex Magnates Institutional Editor Adil Siddiqui held a panel discussion to gather the industry thoughts on customizable solutions. During the discussion, Tom Higgins, CEO of Gold-i said that he is of the opinion that “most of the time, people take a standard platform, then add up to 10 back end add-ons to customize it and give each platform an edge, to which Stanislav Stolyar, VP FX Products and board member at Devexperts responded: Our business is all about customization, we can provide a suite of technologies that can suit each business circumstance but we are looking for long term relationships.”
“Therefore we can increase performance and help brokers meet demand when a broker starts to grow. It is perilous to go into business and start up in two days with an off the shelf system. Management teams of firms need to learn the business as they grow and adapt accordingly. It’s also about marketing advantage. Why would a client or trader pick one also-ran product over another similar one?” was Mr. Stolyar’s viewpoint.
The X3 Open Hub reflects that line of thinking, insofar as creating a customizable environment is a more sustainable method than sticking to proprietary model according to Mr. Jutgla, who explained to Forex Magnates: “One of our main advantages over our competitors is the fact that our X Open Hub trading environment is totally open on the client side, back end and liquidity side with no processing fees”.
Each Firm A Master Of Its Own Destiny
Competition for business is now an interesting subject, as it could be suggested that the major STP direct market access brokers can provide a white labeled solution to new startups which also includes liquidity, a CRM and back end integration with no effort required by the broker/client, therefore negating the benefit of commissioning a third party provider.
In this case, an off-the-shelf, end-to-end solution can be put in place, which is at the outset a very quick rebranding exercise of an existing firm’s offering, but ultimately future-proofing is difficult, as this model has no flexibility, and the broker becomes dependent on the provider’s plans for upgrades without being able to do them alone.
Mr. Jutgla explained to Forex Magnates that he understands that independence and self-reliance are factors which brokers consider, therefore opting for third party provision rather than a vanilla package from an STP broker which is an exact copy of said broker’s model.
In an interview with Forex Magnates just a few weeks after the launch of the X Open Hub, Mr Jutgla detailed this perspective: “X Financial Solutions offers the opportunity to its clients to differentiate themselves from every other broker out there, with the ability to create a propriety front end.”
“We believe that retail clients are tired of seeing the same tired platforms regurgitated at different brokerages. With our solution, not only does the broker have the ability to create a bespoke front end, but the additional offering to their clients of 21st century trading opportunities. We also provide an adaptable CRM and a very high level integration of back office systems. The main reasons why a brokerage would choose x Financial Solutions in place of the big STP brokers white labeled product is very simple: to be independent and to be different.”
On the client side, a major corporate strategy within x Financial Solutions is that it offers the opportunity to its clients to differentiate themselves from other brokers via the ability to create a propriety front end.
“We believe that retail clients are tired of seeing the same tired platforms regurgitated at different brokerages. With our solution, not only does the broker have the ability to create a bespoke front end, but the additional offering to their clients of 21st century trading opportunities” stated Mr Jutgla.
“We also provide an adaptable CRM and a very high level integration of back office systems. The main reasons why a brokerage would choose x Financial Solutions in place of the big STP brokers white labeled product is very simple: to be independent and to be different.”
X Open Hub is a cloud-based trading environment with an open API structure enabling anyone to develop on top of the existing technology, whether through applications sold at xStore.pro or through creating their own bespoke trading platforms from start to finish. It will be interesting to note which direction this fully customizable model will take from here, especially as it is cloud based, an infrastructure model which is becoming the norm nowadays.
With new infrastructure and connectivity solutions aiming themselves at the electronic trading industry such as Exalt Communications’ completely wireless microwave system which is currently in the final stages of development, it may not be long before entire trading systems are free of all physical infrastructure and able to be totally bespoke without any compatibility issues. Times, they are a-changing.
