Centralised trading venue OptAxe has received FCA authorisation to operate a multilateral trading facility (MTF) for axe-driven FX options trading.
Chris Jackson, Yorke O’Leary
OptAxe stated that it is launching the new venue to address fundamental shortcomings in FX options trading.
According to the firm, increased fragmentation in FX trading now presents substantial position distribution and coverage challenges, and places constraints on effective price discovery and execution options.
Elsewhere, the Uncleared Margin Rule and other regulatory requirements mandating initial margining for all trades have raised cost for FX options businesses, with bilateral trading margin requirements heavily impacting balance sheets.
OptAxes’s solution sources and consolidates the best interest available in the market, in real-time. Axe inventory is aggregated by OptAxes into a single platform, acting as a multi-issuer venue rather than a multi-dealer platform, with RFQ and counterparty disclosure at the point of execution.
“OptAxe is a fully centralised, regulated venue for liquidity discovery, dissemination and execution that empowers trading participants with actionable insights from centralised liquidity information,” said Chris Jackson, chief executive and co-founder at OptAxe.
“We automate manual, bilateral processes and consolidate available axe inventory into a single platform, effectively acting as a multi-issuer, not a multi-dealer platform, RFQ-based venue”.
The FCA authorisation follows a two-year process from participating in the FCA’s Pathway Programme to gaining a full trading venue licence, compliant with all the regulatory obligations of an MTF, from operational resilience to surveillance, trade reporting and regulatory data reporting.
“With OptAxe, all market participants can easily access a centralised source of actionable axe inventory with evidence-based pricing that meets the demands of the trading community today and tomorrow,” said Yorke O’Leary, chief operating officer and co-founder at OptAxe.