Archax, the UK FCA-regulated digital asset exchange, broker, and custodian, has appointed Malcolm Ford to its Institutional Sales division, based in London.
Mr. Ford is a co-founder of The Broker Club, an exclusive community for financial services brokers operating within capital markets to champion issues specific to the broker community. The club boasts over 700 members representing in excess of 120 brokerage firms.
Malcolm Ford joins Archax from Assure Hedge, where he was a Sales Consultant tasked on sales assignments for a variety of capital markets and fintech businesses, developing and implementing sales strategies for the UK.
At the time, he was named Head of Equity Platform Sales at CMC Markets, where he promoted the brand to the institutional client base as part of the firm’s efforts towards small/emerging hedge funds.
He held full accountability for sourcing leads through an extensive institutional network, with a focus on promoting products to clients.
Mr. Ford’s notable achievements include taking a fledgling European electronic brokerage business at Cheuvreux into a market-leading and highly profitable organization.
An expert at developing and implementing the go-to-market strategies for launching start-up businesses and expanding the client bases, Mr. Ford uses his wide network of contacts to boost growth for companies within the trading industry.
Other past roles include Head of Strategic Broker Dealer Sales at Instinet Europe, where he revitalized a legacy wholesale electronic book, implementing a cross-selling strategy across Instinet and Nomura products.
Prior to that, he was head-hunted by KCG to drive electronic revenue and serve existing/new clients in Europe, as Director of KCG Europe for two years up until October 2014. There, he introduced new revenue streams by launching a settlement service and a delivering client service.
From 2010 to 2012, Mr. Ford was Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Electronic Trading, and from 2000 to 2010, he was the Senior Sales Manager at Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux.
Graham Rodford, CEO of Archax, commented: “For the next phase of the Archax journey, we need to ramp up our interaction with the traditional institutional community, as we roll out digital asset solutions that are directly aimed to serve their needs. Malcolm brings extensive experience and connections from that world, and has the proven skillset needed to drive forward our growth in that space.”
Archax’s products and services cover the full range of digital assets, from cryptocurrencies to regulated digital securities. It is also pioneering the use of tokenization and blockchain technology to help democratize financial markets and bring liquidity to assets that are hard to trade – as well as ultimately to revolutionize all traditional financial markets, particularly in post-trade.
Malcolm Ford added: “I am delighted to be joining the Archax team at this exciting point in their development. The explosion of activity in the crypto space is highlighting the requirement for institutions to look for trusted partners in the digital asset world. As the first and only FCA regulated digital securities exchange, Archax is in the enviable position of helping institutions unlock this fast-developing market”.
The digital assets space keeps on hiring the best talent from the traditional ecosystem. This time it is Archax as the firm builds a team that is able to disrupt and reinvent the trading industry.
Archax has recently partnered with a leading supplier of digital compliance solutions, NorthRow, in order to deliver robust client due diligence processes, monitor their clients risk status on an ongoing basis, offer an effortless remote customer onboarding experience, and ensure the highest levels of anti-money laundering regulatory requirements are met.
Andrew Flatt, CTO of Archax, said: “As the first firm to be listed on the FCA’s cryptoasset register, delivering and conducting KYC/AML checks on our customers is critical. Archax needed a partner that shares its mantra of speed, security and user experience. Our new relationship with NorthRow has made this possible. By accelerating our customer due-diligence processes, Archax users will benefit from a great user experience whilst we ensure we meet the highest levels of compliance.”
Archax aims to bring liquidity to assets that are currently hard to trade and revolutionize the post-trade space by bridging the gap between the blockchain-centric crypto community and the traditional investment space.
The digital asset exchange provides tokenization of assets to create regulated digital securities or security tokens and bring liquidity to markets.
Archax has recently appointed Alex Royle to its executive committee as the new Chief Compliance Officer. Royle served as a part of the UK’s regulatory authority for a total of two and a half years during which he served as part of Equity Market & Derivatives Market Supervision teams and a member of the MTF/OTF Trading Venue Supervision. He led the supervisory effort of a number of the most innovative MTFs at the FCA.
