Fidessa has made its first move into the low-latency, low-touch trading technology market with a low-latency direct market access (DMA) platform that is delivered as a managed service and aims to provide brokers with high-performance, scalable and consistent access to global equity and derivatives markets.
The platform is the first service to emerge from Fidessa’s Electronic Execution business that was set up a year ago in response to requests from tier one banks for outsourced market access that could be integrated with in-house algo trading and order management systems.
Will Winzor-Saile, an executive in the EMEA product marketing team of Electronic Execution at Fidessa, says: “Many tier one firms have several trading platforms, some vendor platforms and others developed in house. This means market access takes a lot of work to sustain and can be a burden. By outsourcing market access to a reliable vendor, these firms can reduce the risk of multiple platforms, save money and offer a better service to their customers.”
The low-latency, low-touch DMA solution is offered as a stand-alone managed service that can be can be integrated with Fidessa’s trading platforms or with other vendor platforms. It includes not only market access, but also frameworks for smart order routing, internalisation, algo trading and risk management. These can also be integrated with a firm’s systems and are available as part of a complete managed service or as separate modules.
Central to the low-latency offer is Fidessa’s updated global infrastructure that will be used to underpin all sell-side products going forward. David Polen, global head of Electronic Execution at Fidessa, explains: “The managed service is hosted in collocation and proximity data centres around the world and delivered through dedicated, private infrastructure, allowing complete control and fine tuning of the hardware and connectivity to offer optimum levels of service. As a result, we are able to provide a combination of functionality and performance that other vendors are simply unable to match.”
The service has been piloted by a tier one bank operating out of the US and Europe, and by a large regional broker in Asia. Winzor-Saile expects a number of existing Fidessa customers to adopt the managed DMA service before the end of this year, along with large brokers that do not use Fidessa platforms, but can benefit from integrating the service.
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