Itiviti Plans Tbricks Roadmap in Asia-Pacific

Swedish trading technology provider Itiviti is expanding its trading platform Tbricks in Asia-Pacific, particularly for market-making of warrants, callable bull/bear contracts and options.

The vendor plans to launch Tbricks in countries such as Singapore, Australia, and China after an initial rollout in Hong Kong. 

Ofir Gefen, president of Asia-Pacific at Itiviti, says bringing Tbricks to Asia is “definitely” one of Itiviti’s key initiatives in its product roadmap that will extend well into next year. 

Itiviti is in the process of launching Tbricks in Hong Kong, with some clients there testing the product and giving feedback. 

“We’re starting to roll out the Tbricks platform with specific market-making capabilities for the Asia markets starting with Hong Kong. We will be starting the sales campaign with clients shortly,” he says.

Itiviti has deployed Tbricks for market-making specifically with one client for beta testing, and will be working with another two clients soon. 

He says the vendor is developing its low-touch agency platform in order to adhere to Asia-specific requirements. “Users will have more ability to customize information by using the low-touch platform and manage their clients’ order flow,” he says. 

He says in terms of demand for low-touch platforms, Asia has been a significant driver, particularly in derivatives. “Asia has been heavily involved in making sure the product complies with regulations,” he adds. 

“Institutional investors are heavy users of high-touch platforms. They used to call their orders in and talk to the trader. A lot of that has changed over the past decade because the thing that has changed fundamentally—beyond regulation—has been cost pressure. This stems from a significant move from active management to more passive management. As a result, there has been a lot of fee pressure on the buy side to bring costs down. This is causing institutions to trade more effectively and efficiently,” Gefen says. 

Since merging with Ullink, Gefen says the breadth of services it offers has doubled, covering trading and market-making to low-touch and high-touch connectivity solutions.