AFTAs 2016: Best Trading Infrastructure Provider—Trumid Financial

Trumid Financial has done just that in the corporate bond trading space with its latest offering, Trumid Market Center, which focuses on the user experience. The platform is built specifically for trading protocols native to corporate bonds, as opposed to a number of competing platforms, which are ostensibly equity trading platforms repackaged, repurposed and released under different names.

The ability to create a product geared to meet the direct needs of corporate bond traders comes from the New York-based vendor compiling a team that has deep knowledge of the industry, according to Mike Sobel, president of Trumid.

“Our team spent decades transacting in this market, and this experience allows Trumid to collaborate with our users to build a platform that fits into their workflow and lets them trade what they want, when they want,” Sobel says.

The focus on user experience has been a major goal of Market Center since its creation. Sobel says the firm recently introduced a number of new interface and protocol features aimed at addressing the idiosyncrasies of the credit market.

Those features include offering Swarms on Demand, which allows users to initiate Swarms (trading sessions that launch when compatible orders exist) on approximately 32,000 corporate securities. The firm has also added a Likelihood to Trade Score (LTS) that helps traders find bonds that seem likely to be traded in the near term.

The firm’s network of users weighs in at almost 300 buy-side and sell-side firms. It took just over a month for Market Center, which was launched in July 2016, to hit $1 billion in volume traded.

However, all the features in the world don’t matter if the platform doesn’t have buy-in participation from end-users. That hasn’t been a problem for Trumid, even in its early days. The firm’s network of users weighs in at almost 300 buy-side and sell-side firms. It took just over a month for Market Center, which was launched in July 2016, to hit $1 billion in volume traded.

And while the firm has shown early signs of success, Trumid gives no indication of slowing down its drive to address customers’ needs.

“Since the company’s initial launch in April 2014, Trumid had been focused on bringing our technology fully in-house, increasing functionality, flexibility, and ease-of-use,” Sobel says. “We learned a lot through analysis and collaboration with our clients to ensure the new platform meets and anticipates their needs.”