Finding the right blend of banking and clearing has only gotten more challenging in 2020. In light of growing competition in this space, it is harder to stand out – a feat Atlas Bank has managed to accomplish.
Finance Magnates spoke with Melissa Webster, V.P. relationship manager and Ilya Bogdanov, Senior Vice President and Head of Technology at Atlas Bank for an in-depth perspective on the group’s operations:
Who is Atlas Bank and can you describe your main business segments?
Atlas Bank is a full-service bank, operating under a general banking license in Panama City, Panama. Our main lines of business are Prime Banking and Private Banking.
As a regulated bank, we are subject to strict supervision by the superintendence, a minimum capital requirement ($10m) and adherence to capital adequacy ratios.
Can you touch on precisely what services Atlas Bank provides for clients?
Atlas Bank boasts a robust services suite. Via our Prime Banking division, the group offers clearing services in a variety of financial instruments including, FX, metals, and Contracts-for-difference (CFDs).
As one of the few banks in this space, we also offer clients a distinct advantage – the ability to manage their banking services and cross margin their clearing accounts – all in one place.
Through our Private bank, Atlas also offers traditional banking services such as CD’s, savings and checking accounts.
Ilya Bogdanov (CTO), Atlas Bank
Banks are routinely defined by the scale and versatility of their offerings. What type of technology does Atlas Bank offer?
We view ourselves as a technology focused bank. We offer a variety of solutions that target different client types; for margin traders – AtlasFX, and for customers that access Liquidity via a Prime Broker - Rubicon.
Rubicon is our multi-product price aggregation and price generation engine. The price engine primarily deals electronically with Liquidity Providers and clients, but also permits manual trades to be executed. Rubicon can connect multiple clients, liquidity providers, aggregate prices, and provide top of the book prices to the clients.
Our front-end, AtlasFX, offers clients access to over 80 spot-FX currency pairs, precious metals. Atlas Bank customers can link their clearing account to their banking account and execute transactions via the AtlasFX terminal, web trader, or mobile app – all seamlessly integrated with our back office for position monitoring and real time PnL management.
Our margin engine allows clients to directly cash collateralize with the bank and trade on leverage.
MT4 / MT5 Integration – in order to service MT4 / MT5 brokerages globally, we are very excited to announce our integration with Prime XM.
Customers globally can now connect to and access Atlas Bank liquidity via the robust and reliable PXM infrastructure.
Can you outline what type of clients Atlas Bank works with?
Atlas Bank accepts professional clients – this constitutes mainly institutions and financial intermediaries. We adhere to strict KYC and AML policies in accordance with local and global regulations.
On the private banking side, we accept a variety of different clients from HNW individuals to companies.
How do clients open an account with Atlas Bank, and are they opening a trading account or an actual bank account, or both?
Great question – clients have the option to open either a bank account or a prime account, which allows access to our FX, CFD and metals product offering – or clients can opt to open both accounts at the same time.
As a full-service bank, we are uniquely positioned to service brokers and corporates with their banking needs as well as their trading business.
The KYC process is in line with global standards in terms of opening a bank account – our private banking team will require source of funds, ownership information and incorporation documents.
Let’s talk 2020. What is your strategy for the year and who are your target clients?
We kicked off our product launch at the end of 2019, attending the Finance Magnates London Summit and Felaban, which both went very well.
We plan to attend the iFX EXPO conferences in Cyprus this year with an eye on discussing our new product developments.
More specifically, this includes CFD’s and our recent integration with PrimeXM, which I mentioned earlier.
Finally, we are targeting a niche market that consists of hedge funds, retail aggregators, proprietary trading firms, local banks in Latin America (LATAM) and treasury desks.
You can contact us to learn more here or through our email primebanking@atlasbank.com
Disclaimer: The content of this article is sponsored and does not represent the opinions of Finance Magnates.
