Articles

Increasing competition seen among leading FX software firms.

The race to add more and more features to FX-brokerage software suites is gaining steam. The latest salvo is being offered by Leverate, which announced the introduction of LXRisk, which presents Forex brokers with a dashboard-like view of positions across the enterprise – everything from A-Book, B-Book, and Room to Total Broker Status, providing a complete view of exposure and broker revenue.

It seems as thought the FX software arms race is centered around three main themes / features:

1. mobility, and adding more functionality and ease-of-use for mobile trading apps, as mobile trading increases in popularity (although it remains a small piece of the overall trading pie), 
2. latency, minimizing the possibility of slippage and stale quotes, and
3. risk management, as more and more firms seek to enable real-time, easy access to important information, both for internal as well as regulatory purposes. The new Leverate offering would be classified here.

Leverate is 25% owned by Saxo Bank (a member of LeapRate's Approved List of Forex firms), however it continues to operate independently. It seems as though Saxo's investment in Leverate, made in July 2011, was done as part of Saxo's plan to launch MT4 trading for its clients this year.