Next up in our Leaders in Trading 2023 shortlist write up series, we bring you the esteemed candidates fighting it out for The TRADE’s much-coveted Fintech of the Year award, in partnership with Instinet.
This award recognises those trailblazers looking to revolutionise the way the industry operates by optimising workflows, creating new routes to market ,and offering up new and innovative technology to replace manual tasks.
After an extensive selection process, The TRADE and Instinet have chosen an eclectic selection of firms for this year’s shortlist, including: Ediphy, Octaura, Saphyre and smartTrade Technologies.
Ediphy
Designed as a single point of entry to the fixed income markets for participants, Ediphy has made waves in the last 12 months. The firm is known for both its data and analytics,and its fixed income execution offerings, combining the two to become a swiss army knife for fixed income traders looking to navigate the markets.
At the end of last year, Ediphy launched its credit and cleared interest rate swaps solution alongside its existing government bond trading capability. Since this expansion of its remit, the firm has announced several other new initiatives aimed at further assisting participants using its platform.
In June, Ediphy launched a new artificial intelligence tool for assessing bonds liquidity, aimed at addressing challenges posed by fragmentation in the fixed income markets.
Named Liquidity Checker, the tool allows users to input their own bond interests in a personalised watchlist and subsequently gives real time notifications of shifting liquidity.
The system scans the market and then notifies users of the optimal time to trade their chosen instruments. If their chosen bonds are lacking liquidity, the tool allows users to broaden their search to alternative options. It also has a “smart search” function that will make its own suggestion to similar bonds for the user’s chosen portfolio based on reference and market data.
This was followed by a new all-in-one platform aimed at addressing workflow and data challenges in the fixed income space, namely data overload and disparate workflow environments, launched in September. In practice, the solution captures internal data for clients, including orders, axes and RFQ history and subsequently combines this with liquidity data from various market gateways.
Octaura
In April, Octaura, an electronic trading, data, and analytics solution for syndicated loans and CLOs, officially launched into the market as the first comprehensive syndicated loan trading venue delivering trading protocols, real-time data and analytics on a single platform. The firm has received backing from Bank of America, Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Moody’s Analytics, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. It was also shortlisted for The TRADE’s Editors’ Choice Outstanding Electronic Trading Initiative in 2022.
Backed by the seven syndicated loan market dealers, Octaura developed a platform which allows clients to execute via traditional request for quote (RFQ) on single line items, or a list of facilities, leading to other portfolio trading protocols based on participant demands like optimisations and ramps. Built in collaboration with Genesis Global, Octaura asserts that its platform reduces friction points and potential errors inherent to manual trading with automated trade bookings, utilising straight through processing and working with order management system providers to develop pre- and post-trade integration functionalities.
The loan trading platform is currently live with 81 buy-side clients and 11 dealers, with another 50 buy-side firms in the onboarding process.
In October, Octaura Holdings integrated list and request for quote (RFQ) protocols to its existing syndicated loan trading platform. The new protocols will provide clients with faster trade execution and enhanced price transparency with straight-through processing, alongside streamlining trading workflows for dealers and buy-side investors.
Up next for Octaura is tackling the CLO market. The firm is currently onboarding accounts for the launch of a beta version of the CLO trading platform, which will feature dealer axes and RFQ protocols later this year. Octaura is also developing a solution for the “challenging and time-consuming” BWIC process, which is expected to launch next year.
Saphyre
After an incredibly strong 2022 for Saphyre, the firm has continued to excel and innovate, constantly pushing the boundaries of its client offering. Saphyre’s interoperable artificial intelligence technology helps firms to digitise and structure shared data and documents pre-trade. This allows firms to assess risk faster, as well as speeding up the onboarding process by eliminating inefficiencies in the booking, confirmation, and settlement process.
Last year, saw Saphyre receive backing from JP Morgan and BNP Paribas in a Series A funding round of $18.7 million and gained traction for its flagship artificial intelligence solution from Legal & General Investment Management. Among the other major names added to its roster in 2022 was Societe Generale, which onboarded Saphyre’s platform for buy-side fund onboarding. The work gained the firm a shortlisted nomination for the Fintech of the Year award at Leaders in Trading 2022.
However, Saphyre’s work did not stop there and in 2023, co-founders Gabino and Stephen Roche, have shown no signs of abating when it comes to further innovating their platform. In February, the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) FXall business entered into a strategic alliance with Saphyre to digitise account onboarding for FXall clients through Saphyre’s AI technology.
Saphyre’s AI technology gives liquidity providers the ability to systematically approve accounts and is validated and live for a subset of FXall clients – with plans for all FXall clients to receive the offering as additional enhancements are made this year. The technology will offer asset owners and buy-side users the ability to share all their FX account data and documents with their respective liquidity providers and FXall. Elsewhere, sell-side users will have the same capabilities alongside being able to provide statuses to the accounts’ KYC, tax, credit risk, legal and ops setup activities.
smartTrade Technologies
Last but not least, smartTrade Technologies has had a stellar year both in terms of bolstering its offering and expanding its client base. The firm provides an end-to-end multi-asset electronic trading and payments technology suite across foreign exchange, crypto, fixed income and derivatives. According to smartTrade, it is connected to more than 130 liquidity providers.
It’s core offerings include LiquidityFX, an ultra-low latency FX trading solution, smartFI, a sell- and buy-side fixed income trading solution, and its expansive suite of analytics. In March, Japanese securities firm SMBC Nikko Securities selected smartTrade Technologies’ fully hosted and managed FX platform LiquidityFX to enhance its FX trading activities in Japan. The platform provides aggregation, smart execution, risk management, order management, analytics, payments and multi-channel distribution, alongside offering support for a range of instruments including FX spot, forwards, swaps, NDFs and options.
The firm prides itself on its newly established artificial intelligence offering. Announced in September, the ‘smart Copilot’ tool aims to enhance front office payments and trading. smart Copilot leverages the integration of several large language models (LLMs) and technologies including OpenAI ChatGPT to provide an enhanced and tailored sales assistance offering that optimises trading.
smart Copilot is specifically focused on enhanced automation, client interaction tracking, optimising position management, breaking communication barriers, enabling text conversation to generate pricing requests and client tickets automatically, and providing ‘actionable’ data-driven insights.