Natallia Hunik, Global Head of Sales at Advanced Markets LLC & Fortex Inc. is one of the 700 senior FX industry executives at today’s FXIC conference in New York City hosted by Shift Forex.
Ms. Hunik is one of the movers and shakers of America’s urbane and sophisticated FX prime brokerage sector, and revealed to LeapRate’s Andrew Saks-McLeod some revolutionary aspects of Advanced Markets & Fortex’s current business structure.
Natallia Hunik joined Advanced Markets from Boston Technologies, marking an exciting time in her highly esteemed career, having been instrumental in taking Boston Technologies.
Ms. Hunik was a pioneer at Boston Technologies, having joined the firm when there were just two personnel, and witnessing its growth to a company of 100 staff.
At the FXIC conference in New York today, LeapRate’s Andrew Saks-McLeod met with Ms. Hunik to take a close look at her plans at Advanced Markets and Fortex.
“At Boston Technologies, I was involved in the company’s entire operation and evolution as I was with the company from the very beginning at which time it was, as is often the case with startups, necessary to build every aspect of the business” said Ms. Hunik.
“I went to Japan in 2011, to form the Japanese office, then replicated that success in China and was heading Global Sales for whole group, Boston, Shanghai, Japan, and Asia.
Fortex joint venture: End to end brokerage solution on its way
Ms. Hunik explained to leaprate that the anticipated joint venture between Advanced Markets and Fortex has now been announced.
“The two companies worked together for a long time, but officially announced the relationship yesterday. This will allow us to create a wealth of new services for brokerages. We are soon launching a start-your-broker solution” she revealed to LeapRate.
“The joint venture will allow us to provide a complete prime of prime solution Many brokerages many have recently lost their prime of prime relationships, therefore this is an essential service that is in high demand.”
“As part of this, we established a relationship with UBS, and will be targeting all the brokerages that lost their prime brokerage relationships. Over recent months there have been more exits than entries into that sector” said Ms. Hunik.
As far as other major developments are concerned, Fortex is opening in Shanghai on July 22 this year.
“Technology as a differentiator”
Ms. Hunik views technology as a differentiator. “Through technological advancement, we now achieved full post trade tansaparency, and have also our new Fortex web trader.”
“Pepperstone was the first brokerage to get the new web trader.”
“Of course we support MetaTrader 4 as this is ubiquitous, but we also have three institutional proprietary platforms. and at this stage we have one customer that is live on Fortex 6, which is the new generation with algo trading capabilities.”
Ms. Hunik cites service as one of the company’s edges over competitors. “Fortex customers do not have to pay seperately for a bridge. This is the ethos which was attractive to IBFX and Pepperstone when they onboarded the solution. The joint venture between Advanced Markets and Fortex allows for a completely integrated system including technical and customer support from the US and Hong Kong.”
“Our execution model is 100% STP” said Ms. Hunik. “There was a lot of distrust after January 15, therefore we majored on post trade transparency, and committed efforts toward working out how many milliseconds it takes an order to fail on the system with regard to execution. Everyone is scared that more brokerages are going to go out of business, so this is vital.”
Custodial accounts via Macquarie Bank to boost investor confidence
“Macquarie Bank is one of the largest investors” explained Ms. Hunik. “With Macquarie, we can offer Custodial accounts, which as well as being segregated from operational funds, are actually opened in the name of each individual client, therefore the company is not allowed to cover other peoples losses with funds from those accounts. After the Swiss National Bank situation in January, there is alot of interest in that service.”
“As far as the corporate structure is concerned Macquarie and GFI, which is now part of BGC Partners, along with Cantor Fitzgerald are major investors. The company is bank owned and therefore transparent” she confirmed.
“As far as the immediate future is concerned, we have a lot of new product releases coming up, as well as enhancements in liquidity. Although we added 10 CFDs recently, we are adding 5 more in a week and have the right prime brokerage arrangement in place for CFDs” concluded Ms. Hunik.