Nikolai Isayev

There are obviously many data points that retail brokers need to take into consideration when selecting their panel of liquidity providers and as a leading FX and CFD prime broker, I’m interested in understanding what data points do you consider the most important for brokers? How do brokers get access to crucial data, and what can having access to this data really do for a broker today?

James Meek

So yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, data is one of those things that’s just growing and growing and there’s more you can do with it every day, every week. We’re trying to develop that on our side and retail brokers are doing the same. The difference between working with a retail broker that make decisions on gut feel (and there are many of them) rather than analysing solid, hard data is a completely different experience and the ability that we have to optimise their liquidity is a completely different experience.

So, take two brokers that have the same volume, the same client base, the same geographical aim but take one that has a really solid data system either in-house or a partner versus one that’s just eyeballing top of book spreads, or every now and then taking a look at execution and then basing their decisions on that. Those two experiences are completely different, completely different. And obviously, I’m going to say that the one that looks at the data is the one that we prefer to work with. So in essence, getting access to those data points is crucial.

The next thing I would say there is it’s super important for the broker then to also be able to present the data internally and externally. So internally, I mean, if you’re a retail broker, if you’re a Head of Dealing, you need to be able to easily present the data to your management upstream so you can quickly make the right decisions. You also need to present the data to your sales team so that they can they can work well with the liquidity that they’re then selling onto their retail clients. It also means that you need to present the data to us as a liquidity provider so that we can take action as soon as possible.

I think the most important thing is getting access either through a data partner, like a tech partner, or if you have an in-house team, obviously it can be super expensive and very resource heavy. If you want to develop your own in-house tech, which is what we’ve done, it’s a combination of the two really, having in-house tech, having a good data partner, somebody that you trust, somebody that you might pay a lot of money to. But at the end that’s going to become the greatest return to your business is knowing where to make the right decisions.