Not all industries see fairly fierce competitors also become clients of one another. But the Retail FX sector is not just any other industry.
LeapRate has learned that leading UK/Cyprus FX broker FxPro is about to launch FxPro Prime, providing liquidity and aggregation services (mainly) to smaller retail FX firms. In acquiring liquidity access, a broker can either open accounts directly with a large number of liquidity providers (such as large banks), or simplify things by opening an account with a prime broker. The Prime Broker is then the one which aggregates liquidity from a large number of sources, and the smaller FX broker is saved the hassle – and the cost of depositing significant capital with each source.
FxPro has built its Prime Brokerage operation around its recent acquisition of FX liquidity aggregator Quotix. It plans to formally unveil FxPro Prime next month, in mid November.
Other leading retail FX brokers which have gotten into the liquidity provision business include Saxo Bank, FXCM, ETX Capital and most recently Australia’s AxiTrader. In addition, other established providers of prime brokerage services to the FX sector include Citadel, TopFX, and a number of large commercial banks.
Speaking with LeapRate on the launch of the new service, Charalambos Psimolophitis, CEO of FxPro explained the rationale behind the firm’s foray into prime brokerage:
Since our move to being a 100% FX Agency Model broker back in 2012 we have built an exceptionally deep pool of liquidity and the time is now right open this up to the institutional space. This is an exciting new product launch for FxPro and we believe that our technology puts us in a position to shake up the industry when it comes to the provision of liquidity and prime-of-prime services.