PFSOFT has announced the integration of market data from ACTIV Financial for its Protrader, multi-asset Trading Platform . While many readers probably haven’t heard of ACTIV Financial, this is actually a pretty important achievement for PFSOFT. ACTIV Financial is a low latency market data provider with their products primarily being used by US traders for both pricing products to clients (IE: options Market Makers ) and operating HTF strategies and price discovery. Under the arrangement, brokers using Protrader will have access to ACTIV Financial’s market data for pricing of European equities, options and futures. The reason why this is important, is that it provides an integrated solution for Protrader brokers to price CFDs that they are offering to clients.
While there are plenty of market data solutions, and PFSOFT has partnered with a number of them, the is a variance between offerings. As written about in an in-depth report in our Q4 2012 Forex Industry Report about ‘Market Data’, having quality pricing is a key element for brokers. Brokers typically provide a derivative of real market contracts, the prices of their CFDs mimic exchange traded products. Deviations of pricing due to latency, flawed connections, or mispriced data can lead to end user clients receiving trade rejections or brokers being vulnerable to arbitrage. Therefore, the small differences between market data vendors can be critical to a broker’s operations, and seamless integration becomes a critical factor.
As referenced to when we reviewed their mobile platform, the PFSOFT is aiming to become the go-to destination for firms looking to launch multi-asset trading solutions. As opposed to other trading platform vendors that target online brokers, PFSOFT’s has been focusing on winning business from existing financial firms with established client bases, such as banks or asset managers, that are looking to offer additional trading products. Therefore, the ACTIV integration provides another option for users to price products for clients.
One important point is that PFSOFT clients still need to contract pricing directly from ACTIV. PFSOFT provides market data integration, but users need to also become customer of ACTIV. As such, as it typical of exchange based market data relationships, Protrader users may need to also acquire licensing to become market data redistributors if they are using the pricing for CFD.
Commenting on the partnership was Denis Borisovsky, CEO of PFSOFT “PFSOFT strives to provide the most comprehensive solution for its clients. Integration with ACTIV Financial is a valuable addition to our product diversity and we are glad that multiple brokers are starting to work with ACTIV’s services.”
Frank Piasecki, President of ACTIV Financial added, “in order for firms to succeed in today’s volatile market conditions, they need a cost-effective way to access the growing volumes of market data crucial to executing successful strategies. ACTIV is delighted to be working with PFSOFT to deliver a comprehensive, multi-asset class European market data for PFSOFT’s Protrader clients. As market data volumes continue to grow, we’ll continue to provide high quality, low-latency data for our clients while keeping their overall TCO under control.”
