Speech by George Grech, Head of Trading at Exante, during the company's Corporate Business Breakfast on Malta.
"Distinguished guests. Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. My name is George Grech, and I am the Head of Exante's Trade Desk.
I’ve been involved in the investment industry for over 20 years. Most of this experience has been gained from working abroad. However, I had an opportunity to return to my home country Malta…. And I instantly grabbed it… after spending most of my life in Canada, I was more than ready to trade in my skis for a wind surfer… I actually settled for snorkels instead.
Looking forward to my next great adventure I investigated the ever changing investment services industry in Malta, and came across something that was very innovative and outside of the traditional Maltese investment services mould - a new participant with big ambitions. I came across Exante. I’ve had the privilege to be with Exante since almost its inception.
This morning, I would like to describe to you what makes EXANTE’s execution service very special.
Indeed, as you have just seen, we have a very slick looking trading platform. It has been built for professionals, however, and I want to emphasize, it has been built for easy-of-use. It has built in tools to assist our users in making very enlightened decisions. We do provide a demo version, which is available on our website, and you are more than welcome to give it a test drive. However, I don’t want to linger too much on all of its bells and whistles. It’s a very pretty tool. Yet, it is powerful enough… that I use it in my day-to-day professional activities.
What I want to talk to you about today is what’s under the hood, what’s under the bonnet. If you do take it out for a test drive, fasten your seat belt, because you have the equivalent of a rocket engine powering you. The seed that flourished to become Exante was planted before Exante even existed. The story began with a group of exceptionally bright guys pondering a dilemma… how can you compete in some of the world’s most competitive financial markets?
What this group didn’t know at the time. Was that most of the plumbing that connected the world’s financial markets, from end-user to exchanges, was leaky and ancient. For the most part, the technology in place was older than they were! It wasn’t too long before it became evident, that the performance they sought, was only possessed by a select few organizations, that closely guarded their proprietary technology and market access, and they weren’t about to share it with anyone, they weren’t about to give it away nor offer up their competitive advantage.
Interestingly, Exante's founding directors excelled at trading financial markets and technology. They embarked on an ambitious project. They wanted to connect to the financial markets on their own terms, using 21st century technology and not piggy back on some network that predates the internet.
Having a clear vision, they developed the advanced technology they were seeking. It’s much easier to get to where you are going when you have some knowhow and a road map. Having the benefit of creating something from scratch as opposed to trying to tweak an old system, to meet your new needs allows you to set very rigorous specifications.
When I first used EXANTE’s trading platform, I immediately noticed a huge performance difference. In our industry, we usually measure performance improvement in milliseconds, periods of time that are almost imperceptible to you and me. Having worked for some of the world’s largest investment firms using their numerous trading platforms, after my first try at Exante's trading platform, this improvement was immediately recognized by me.
By the way, our performance improvement isn’t limited to one particular asset class or market. We cover the world of tradable financial instrument, both exchange trading securities and over-the-counter. In the event you are looking to trade a financial instrument, and we don’t have access it, we’ll work very hard to get you access, on better terms and performance than what you are currently experiencing.
All of these different instruments fall into one particular feature that I like to boast about: our platform is multiproduct. Exante's clients can trade all asset classes and all instruments from one account. This includes stocks, bonds, currencies, forwards, metals, futures, options and hedge funds. The whole spectrum of financial instruments. This gives our clients an optimal portfolio overview for risk management and strategic decision making.
Ever since the inception of Exante's trading platform, we have recognized that user experience would ultimately determine our success. It’s not only about performance and speed. It is no coincidence that we continue to invest heavily to improve our client’s experience. We roll out improved versions of our platform on a weekly basis. We like to keep our developers busy.
We at Exante are passionate about innovation and in delivering a powerful, robust and importantly, a practical trading platform for our users. I believe the terms passion and innovation are not only congruent to Exante, but to our wonderful Malta as well. Grazie ħafna!"
To watch the recorded video, please follow the link and do not forget to subscribe to Exante's YouTube channel to stay up to date on the video content.
