e-FX FX Week Awards: FENICS – Best e-FX Software Provider
Release of Fenics Trading Solutions allows the firm to spread across geographies such as Emea and North America
(https://www.fxweek.com/awards/3323421/e-fx-awards-fenics-best-e-fx-software-provider)
Being a niche provider in foreign exchange has benefits. Being a niche provider with one of the world’s largest brokerages as the parent company is even better.
Two and a half years after being acquired by BGC Partners, as part of a takeover of rival broker GFI, Fenics has capitalised on its favourable position and expects to see more.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, the company soft-launched Fenics Trading Solutions (TS), a platform agnostic system supporting multiple APIs, which allows clients to access numerous front-ends and venues, as well as switching between them, according to their business needs. Since the launch, six customers have signed up.
“Fenics TS has been tremendously well received and is leading the business into new areas. We are expanding our client base geographically and into new client demographics. We are now in a period of evaluating these opportunities and what that means in terms of accelerated investment,” says Fenics managing director Richard Brunt.
Over the past three to four years, the brand has also seen real growth in Asia; a growing trend, which the release of Fenics TS has allowed to spread across geographies such as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea), and North America.
“Such universal support for Fenics TS is very encouraging for our global business. As I look at the Fenics business over the next 24 months, I expect Asia to continue to grow at traditional rates, but with the other regions catching up in terms of growth percentage,” Brunt says.
Managing the local differences in client needs is John Crisp, head of product, who notes that while customer requirements tend to be largely uniform across segments, domestic regulation is an important variability.
Fenics TS has been tremendously well received and is leading the business into new areas
While the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is not front and centre for clients in Asia, they need to be mindful that the moment they are doing business with clients in Europe, they will be caught up in the regime. By using Fenics TS, they can become compliant with the rules without needing to reinvent their system’s workflow.
The re-emergence of competition from regional players in the currency space is also a significant factor in the company’s growth story.
“What drives that global demand is Fenics TS is helping people with their electronic market-making to venues and that’s going to be a requirement from larger banks all over the world, particularly for those who are market-makers in their home currency; they need the technology to compete with the top five or 10 that have built out all of that technology in the last 10 years,” he adds.
As opportunities come up, the software brand’s position of being part of a global entity could translate into additional resources to accommodate growth.
“As Fenics is part of the much bigger BGC entity, we can look at accelerating our plans through funding additional resources, potential partnerships or acquisitions – all things we are looking at,” Brunt says.