FinClear, Australia’s leading full-service infrastructure provider for financial markets and provider of trade execution and third-party clearing services, has deployed the Validus platform from Eventus for trade surveillance and post-trade monitoring. This strategic move is aimed at bolstering FinClear’s capabilities in overseeing one in two retail transactions in Australia and managing over AU$360 billion in annual transaction volume.
“This is an important deal for a variety of reasons,” Eventus CEO Travis Schwab tells TradingTech Insight. “FinClear is one of the biggest clearing firms in Australia and so they are a signature bedrock client and partner for us there. We’re excited to be able to continue to grow and establish a much stronger position in Australia and FinClear really helps that, not just as a referenceable client, but also giving us that knowhow; they deal with the uniqueness of the Australian market more than anyone does, so being able to tap into their expertise to help make our product better down there is really helpful. They’ve been really open. The founders are very innovative and Andrea Marani, the CEO of FinClear Execution and Clearing Services, has done a great job running that firm. We couldn’t have picked a better partner to build on our presence in Australia.”
Marani has stated that the reasons for moving to Eventus from FinClear’s previous provider included the platform’s customisability, its advanced technology, and the proactive engagement offered by the Eventus team.
“The customisation aspect is important, because like every marketplace, you have uniqueness in asset classes and you have jurisdictional uniqueness,” says Schwab. “It could be as simple as tailoring the alerting language of the messages to match what people do locally. Or it could be unique procedures that take into account the different rule sets that a regulator like ASIC in Australia might have versus SFC in Hong Kong or the SEC in the US. And so we absolutely have to make sure that we’re ticking all the boxes for the various rules that our customers have to follow or giving them the ability to build those new procedures and tailor the platform to their needs.”
Finclear’s adoption of Validus is particularly relevant in the context of increasing regulatory expectations in Australia. Brokers are required to provide accurate data to the regulators daily as part of their commitment to maintaining market integrity, and are coming under increased scrutiny to monitor trading activities diligently and report any suspicious transactions. Non-compliance has recently led to a number of severe penalties, including Interactive Brokers being fined AU$832,500 in September for its failure to identify suspicious trading, and Openmarkets being hit with a record AU$3,000,000 fine earlier in the year for market integrity violations.
“Australia – and the Asia-Pacific region in general – continues to be really strong for us, and we continue to see great demand across asset classes,” says Schwab. “We love these other areas of the world that are taking on a more transparent regulatory structure and that need technologies like our Validus platform, so that’s an important area of focus for us going forward.”
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