BST Awards 2018: Best Low-Latency Trading Network—Itiviti AB

Itiviti is this year’s winner of the best low-latency trading network category in the BST Awards, its third win in a row, although its 2016 and 2017 successes were under its former name, Ullink. 

Stockholm-based Itiviti amalgamated with Ullink last year in a merger of equals, integrating Ullink’s Nyfix network with Itiviti’s managed FIX offering, which provides access to brokers while at the same time monitors and manages trading flows with dedicated dashboards. The platform also allows clients to analyze executions with the view to helping them develop and implement new trading strategies.  

Philippe Carré, global partnerships director at Itiviti, says the network continues to be a stable and robust trading portal offering buy-side firms fail-safe, global connectivity. “Clients demand a robust partner and we offer that kind of stability as we have had no downtime in more than a decade,” he says. “We also have an ambitious partner policy to make it easier for our clients to connect and interoperate with other platforms.”

Carré adds that Itiviti has one of the largest networks across the capital markets, attracting potential clients looking to connect with other counterparties and trading venues. One of the major upgrades unveiled by Itiviti in the last year was the launch of regional hubs allowing clients to access Itiviti in Asia and Europe. Carré notes that the firm is seeking to maximize the potential for connections from its hubs in Singapore, Tokyo, London, and Paris before it explores the possibility of establishing additional hubs. He adds that future hubs might be located in emerging markets, where capital markets firms have traditionally experienced connectivity challenges. The hubs have already helped expand Itiviti’s customer base in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. 

Itiviti is also looking to expand in the area of post-trade services. “We’re looking at automating more post-trade services and expanding our footprint in terms of the buy side using this service,” Carré says. “We want to make it as close to real time [as possible] to facilitate exceptions [management] so that clients can focus on more complex issues.” 

Carré adds that Itiviti identified a gap in the market for post-trade services and so it is looking to offer more services around analytics and data that can be offered via its network. The company already has a post-trade initiative around the use of its online service platform and is working with a third-party to offer transaction-cost analysis (TCA) functionality. Carré says clients have asked Ititivi for help in combining its services to provide access to more trading venues and not just other traders, an important development for the company that it is currently exploring.