Pohjola and ITG Launch New Smart Order-Routing and Algo Service

Pohjola Asset Management (PAM) and Investment Technology Group (ITG) have announced the launch of a new smart order-routing and algorithmic trading service.

The new platform, which will be made available to third-party institutional traders, required the construction of a new datacenter in Stockholm. It focuses on ultra-low latency and execution speeds, and involved technical expertise and research from both companies.

"The origin of this offering was our desire to reduce slippage costs when trading equities for our funds. We thought that it must be possible to create better smart routers and algorithms for buy-side traders, so we made a decision to build our own buy-side-controlled smart order-router together with ITG," says Simo Puhakka, head of trading at PAM. "Our smart order-router has given us significantly better performance on implementation shortfall costs compared to the ones we have used before. It quickly became apparent that there is demand for this performance level from other institutional traders, so we decided to set up a separate entity, Pohjola Asset Management Execution Services (Pames), to market and further develop the platform. The buy-side smart order-router is now offered to institutional traders and asset managers by Pames, which is 100 percent owned by PAM. The first third-party client has gone live."