Driving Towards A Transparent Market

Rachely Esman, CEO, MarketsPulse

Challenges compliance officers face

The biggest challenges and pain points CCOs/ Compliance officers face, from my experience, is to ensure all parties involved fully understand and implement the regulatory requirements. The officer’s main task is to address the requirements whilst meeting the expected results from their organization, even if at times they are contradictory.

Furthermore, the officer(s) must be sure that both the technical requirements and business needs have been implemented into their company’s platform, which is a challenge in its self since technology may not be a CCO’s specialty.

In general, as an option trading technology provider, the process in which we take to ensure compliancy is by working with compliance officer(s) to fully understand the technical requirements for compliancy and the company’s expectations of the product.

Together, we create a strategic plan that maps how we will meet the regulatory requirements while considering traders’ needs. Throughout the implementation process we work closely with the officer(s) to establish full transparency. In addition, we relieve future concerns the compliance officer(s) faces by enforcing compliancy within the organization through the platform we provide. An example of this is our automated solutions for financial executions processes, rather than manually risking compliancy caused by human error.

The MarketsPulse team actively seeks current information regarding regulations. We always aim to be the first to provide our clients compliant platforms in newly regulated markets and to implement regulatory amendments. We’ve gained much experience in the past few years by working in compliance with regulatory bodies around the world, such as ASIC, MiFID, Japanese FSA, and soon exchanges operating under CFTC or SEC.

Vision

Providing a full, customizable solution that is harmonious with the broker’s branding vision and current systems has been our vision from the onset, offering clients a competitive advantage and longevity in the market.

Since 2008, the online binary industry has rapidly grown and growth barriers have arisen. We’ve pinpointed the causes of the barrier and have adjusted our vision in a direction to foster future growth by creating a new, more mature market structure. Our vision is a new structure, an ecosystem which will drive the market towards maturity by allowing for a much more efficient and transparent market. Ultimately, the benefits of the ecosystem will be reduced risk for brokers, higher return rates for traders, increased market-wide trust and transparency, resulting in increased trading volumes. MarketsPulse’s mission is to empower brokers and traders by creating value across all stakeholders within our industry with the new structure.

Our customers

Our solutions cater to a wide range of clientele; especially well-established financial brokers.
The majority of our clients are online retail brokers who currently offer financial products such as spot FX or CFD’s and are looking to add another product to their offerings. Our Enterprise Solution offers the perfect fit for these enterprise-class brokers. The solution fully integrates with an existing operation, is fully installed on the client’s servers, and many aspects of the platform can be customized to match company branding and provide a competitive advantage.

Customer value proposition

In addition to the technology solutions we provide, our experience and knowledge in the industry offers our clients additional advantages.

Overall, our product addresses a need in the online financial trading industry. In August of 2010 the market for spot FX was hit hard when new leverage regulations were put into place in Japan. Prior to the change, Japan’s FX businesses were viewed to be the most profitable, peaking with monthly volumes estimated at about 4 trillion U.S. dollars, and with over 90 Japanese FX brokers for a population of 130 million people. Unfortunately, many brokers were unable to sustain their business and withdrew from the arena.

Since the leverage restrictions, trading volumes have fluctuated between 30- 50 percent less. Rather, some brokers’ circumstances were different, those who decided to distinguish themselves by including binary options were not only sustainable, but in time their revenues increased. We’ve seen the benefits first hand with a client of ours who continued to prosper as an enterprise-class broker long after the leverage restrictions.

We see that the trend in leverage restrictions are not subsiding in other markets worldwide, calling for a solution that binary can address.

Customers’ benefit

Our technology continues to benefit our clients because of our robust technological solution and the partnership we provide. Furthermore, for greater outreach MarketsPulse is working towards enabling our platform to run in prospective markets, ultimately offering our clients a wider spectrum of opportunity.

An example of this is our current interest in the U.S. market. During the past few months we’ve been closely working with U.S. Exchanges to fully understand the steps to creating a compliant platform for brokers. In order for brokers to offer online binary options trading they work with a platform provider that has implemented their platform to function with exchanges registered with U.S. regulators. A company cannot offer or sell securities unless they are registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

MarketsPulse’s job is to adjust its current technology to plug-in to regulated exchanges in the US to securely provide trading opportunities in the US. Once the product is accepted by the exchanges we will offer brokers our platform which will offer much of the same benefits we currently provide in other markets. Although the exchange model requires new technology we firmly believe that exchange traded binaries will be a success due its efficiency and transparency.

Competitive landscape

Since 2008 only a few binary option platform providers have succeeded in maintaining a strong hold in the market. The main advantage and unique offering we bring to the table for brokers to consider is our Enterprise Solution.

With years of experience we have seen how our full suite of technology and focus on quality customer service has benefited brokers. Actually, in the last month we were ISO 9001:2008 recertified, which I think further shows our continuous commitment to providing the highest level of quality development and customer satisfaction.

In the meantime MarketsPulse has been focusing on where the binary market is heading as a regulated financial instrument. With increasing interest from U.S. brokers and traders, we are focusing our energy to develop a solution best suited for the market.

Our new innovative features we developed in the last few months have increased brokers’ volumes and provided higher trader satisfaction. This was evident when a veteran client of ours was recognized as “Best Binary Options Broker” for 2013. One of our representatives would be more than happy to explain our solutions and new features in full detail.