Finance Magnates spoke with Youssef Barakat, CEO of ProbusFX, who shared details on the company's plans to stand out from the crowd. Mr. Barakat also elaborated on the new brokerage house, as well as its diverse financial services offering and long-term plans.
Youssef, you are already well known and widely respected as an established and highly experienced market professional. However, would you mind sharing some of your background information?
My career in Finance began more than 20 years ago when, as a graduate at the time, I entered London’s financial services sector. Since then, my career has taken me to several places around the world, namely: Geneva, Abu Dhabi, Dublin and currently, the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
Why Cyprus?
Cyprus is rapidly transforming into a European financial hub and apart from the excitement of being present in such a dynamic and fast-paced environment, it is also a great opportunity for expanding within Europe towards offering solid and substantial services in retail space.
Does the name of your company, ProbusFX, mean something specific?
Glad you asked. We chose this name specifically for it having 3 different levels of meaning. Let me explain. To begin with, Probus is a Latin word that means ‘thorough’ but also ‘honest’. Secondly, it is an acronym of our core values: Professionalism, Reliability, Openness, Belief, Uniqueness and Safety. Lastly, ProBus Is short for Professional Business much like ForEx is short for Foreign Exchange.
How did you start? What would you describe as being the ‘starting point’?
I take the ‘starting point’, as you said, to be our commitment to our mission, our mission being to offer unprecedented financial services by providing superior and personalized solutions to each and every one of our clients respectively.
I have worked very closely with my team to establish and maintain a corporate culture that encourages a sense of accomplishment in employees when they are successful in providing clients with lucrative opportunities for financial and personal growth.
What is the vision of ProbusFX?
The vision for this company is to emphasize on forming long term business relationships with our clients, from the early prospect to the seasoned veteran. We recognize the value of each individual and actively make sure that they are always feeling how valued and appreciated they are.
How are you different from other Brokerages and Financial service providers?
ProbusFX is a true STP Broker. This model of executing market orders guarantees that there is no conflict of interest between us and the client. Thus, we align ourselves with their personal investment goals instead of pursuing our own investment goals at the expense of our client, something that credibly differentiates us from a lot if not most of our competition.
No conflict of interest aside, what other attributes do you find important, or let’s say instrumental, towards attracting customers?
Well, let’s start with transparency. We are committed to offering complete, crystal clear transparency when it comes to procedures. Everything, including every step of a procedure or process is openly visible with all information being easily accessible to the client, at any time.
Additional attributes that we know attract many of our customers are our significantly low commission fees and our technological expertise. We strictly adhere to all CySEC regulations and ensure that we remain updated on any regulatory changes, e.g. the recent MiFID II requirements.
Being a member of the Investor Compensation Fund our client’s assets are guaranteed for up to €20.000. The funds of our clients are kept in segregated accounts with custodianship from Cypriot and Global Tier-1 Banks ensuring protection from risks related to the company’s activities.
“Having a Probus Account means enjoying the prestige of trading safely and conveniently, in full trust, with ongoing professional support.”
Do you offer different account options and other types of financial services?
Yes, in fact we do. We have three distinct account types that were specifically designed to cater to all levels of traders and their appetite for risk. So, let’s say you want to keep your trading as simple as possible; we have you covered.
You want advanced access to all instruments with the ability to trade high volumes at the lowest possible fees? We have you covered as well. All account types on offer are suitable for individual as well as institutional clients.
Regarding other types of services, our fully integrated Portfolio Management system gives investors the ability to allocate the management of their assets to us and offers strategy personalization based on their individual needs.
Additionally, we are offering a FIX API Connection for the more demanding traders whilst our MAM Account makes it easy for money managers to trade and manage multiple client accounts directly from the MT4 platform.
Speaking of platforms, which ones do you offer?
At the present moment we are offering MetaTrader 4 (MT4) ) and within a couple of weeks or so, we’ll be launching MetaTrader 5 (MT5) ). We strongly anticipate MT5 becoming the new industry standard.
It is much faster than its predecessor, it supports more order types and has a multitude of new features and options allowing for greater flexibility in customization but also in designing, testing and running indicators and trade-bots, or Expert Advisors as they are called in MetaTrader Lingo.
We are also planning on developing our own dedicated platform with a streamlined GUI for optimum performance and ease of use. We want to use our in-house technological expertise to develop innovations that can yield competitive advantages to our clients.
Additionally, all data is hosted in one of the world’s biggest trading data centers, Equinix LD4. This data centre holds the highest standards for facility operation and guarantees that latencies in online electronic trading are always maintained at an ultra-low minimum.
As a client of ProbusFX, what would be the range of financial instruments that I can currently trade?
We offer a wide selection of instruments to trade, which include Forex, Energies, Precious Metals and Indices, to provide investors with ample opportunity for portfolio expansion and investment diversification. In the near future, we plan on building upon this base and keep on adding new instruments or investment opportunities according to market trends and the specific needs or requests of our clients.
Given that you have already expressed some of your short-term future plans, what will ProbusFX concentrate on over the long-term?
We actively listen to our clients and we take great care in enhancing and personalizing their experience. Our development team is constantly working on improving features and achieving innovations that can further streamline online trading.
An advanced Educational Library is in the making, aiming at providing all the necessary information on trading with insight on additional related subjects for a well-rounded, in-depth trading education.
Our longer-term plans include geographical expansion in non-English speaking jurisdictions and opening our doors to more retail and individual investors from all across the globe.
We want to develop a robust presence within the financial industry being renowned for our premier client service and the longevity of our business relationships.
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