Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation has chosen First Derivatives’ Kx to build and manage its next-generation e-FX platform under a multi-year agreement. The new foreign exchange platform will deliver electronic execution, broad distribution capabilities, algorithmic trading and effective risk management supported by advanced real-time pre and post-trade analytics.
Phase One has begun is now live at Sumitomo. The solution is built on three components – Kx for Flow, Algo Risk Management and FX Analytics – combining sophisticated order management and pricing techniques with customized trading algorithms and distribution of rich liquidity to multiple market channels, enabling Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation to further increase its customer reach.
Behind the new eFX platform is Kx’s kdb+ database engine, which powers state-of-the-art transaction analytics and visualization, offering unique business and customer insights across the trade lifecycle, while ensuring speed and performance across the platform.
Katsuhiko Yano, Joint General Manager, Global Markets Engineering at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, commented: “Kx was a natural choice for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and is well placed to provide us with a flexible, scalable and high-performance technology that easily integrates with our existing systems and provides us with a foundation for our continued growth and expansion in e-FX trading. Kx’s ability to deliver a highly flexible platform supported by a local Japanese presence and global reach will enable us to take advantage of many new opportunities for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and our clients.”
Patrick Brazel, Chief Commercial Officer of Kx commented: “We are very pleased to partner with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation on this strategic initiative. Our e-FX solutions deliver rich functionality informed by many years of FX domain expertise and powered by the world-leading performance of Kx technology. This combination is delivering important benefits for our clients and establishing Kx as a key technology provider to the e-FX market.”
Kx is a division of First Derivatives, a fintech company that serves some of the leading names within the trading industry including JP Morgan, Lloyds Bank, Morgan Stanley, Swedbank, UBS, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse.
First Derivatives completed the acquisition of the minority shareholdings in Kx Systems in 2019, thus bringing total ownership to 100%. The deal was worth $53.8m in cash, which has been paid from FD’s available facilities. “Since we acquired a controlling stake in Kx Systems in October 2014 we have invested heavily to deliver the performance advantages of our combined solutions, branded as Kx technology, to a range of end-markets. We are making exciting progress as we demonstrate our ability to transform our customers’ operational performance by unlocking the value in their data. Full ownership of Kx Systems is an important milestone as we continue to commercialize our technology”, said FD’s CEO Brian Conlon at the time.” Patrick Brazel said.
