Risk management and business intelligence: the future of liquidity bridging

Author: Albina Zhdanova

Last week, we hosted a webinar on the liquidity bridge and how it supports brokers, hedge funds, and prop trading companies on their risk and data management journeys.

Today, we will review the key points covered during the webinar.

Resilience

With how our world operates and how uncertain everything is, every company needs to plan how to respond to changes.

Changes can happen to anyone, even the most prominent players, such as Microsoft, which rolled out an update earlier this year that caused chaos, with many flights being cancelled and delayed worldwide. Nobody is safe from a drastic change and the potential disaster that might follow, but the good news is that we can prepare for and minimise the issue.

While we aim to work with the best and most stable counterparts in the market, sometimes accidents can happen, and we are very well prepared for that:

• We monitor all connected components – datafeed, trading flow, and internet connection.
• We notify you about any error, disconnect, or freeze.
• We have automatic processes to connect to extra Liquidity Providers, extra feeds, extra servers or an extra Trade Processor so that no data is lost and no quote is missed.

For instance, in the Trade Processor liquidity bridge, we have a replica server that takes over if the primary server goes down. This means either the downtime is minimal or there’s no downtime. Additional backup copies with a detailed failover plan secure all data and ensure it’s fully recoverable.

TFB's monitoring is advanced - it monitors trading platform availability, connection stability, and the machine itself, including checking the RAM.

Flexibility

The pace of the world is changing, and we move on very quickly from the things that, for years, were an inherent part of our lives.

Trading platforms

Last year was all about trading platforms, and TFB responded with multiplatform support. We currently work with MT4, MT4, cTrader, Match-Trade, DXTrade, and any internal trading platforms our clients develop in-house. In fact, TFB’s liquidity bridge can connect to any trading platform through FIX API, making it a truly multiplatform solution.

AI in Trade Processor

This year, the wave of Artificial Intelligence came in and knocked us off our feet. Naturally, TFB couldn’t ignore the trend, and we released our own AI assistant built into the liquidity bridge.

The AI assistant doesn’t configure the settings for you, nor does it run trade forecasts, but it’s a great help to our clients who want to learn more about the technology, test something out, or have a question they want answered right away.

Of course, the tech team is still there for you, and if clients have critical queries or want to make changes to important settings, we always urge them to double-check with the support team first to make sure performance will only be affected in a positive way.

Rest API

Another tool that supports risk management and adds flexibility is Rest API. Perfect for external risk management commands and changes in execution, Rest API is there for clients if and when they want to make custom changes.

Usability

Nowadays, you must keep things simple and intuitive. Nobody has the time to be confused by the solutions in their environments; clients need to make business moves and not get stuck searching through user guides and FAQs.

In Trade Processor, you can see reports, customise execution, check settings for the individual account, and see how the order will be executed for them. All these features are perfect for daily checkups and swift decision-making, and they’re easy to find and navigate.

Tip: If you’ve ever been tasked with updating symbols manually, you know how time-consuming and tiring this process is. The Trade Processor liquidity system has a “Symbol tags for bulk execution” setting, where you can update the symbols with a one-off bulk action, saving you hours every week.

Quality

The quality of what our clients do with our solutions is the top priority.

No marketing, a shiny website, a good sales team, and a fancy office can save brokers who don’t provide quality services. That’s why focusing on key, and sometimes basic, activities is so critical.

With TFB, as an example:

• Large orders are processed with the Continuous Execution functionality, which breaks them down into smaller orders. This ensures that the end-user gets the best pricing possible and the broker gets a loyal and satisfied client.
• When you open and close lots of orders, some of them end up opening with one Liquidity Provider and closing with a different one. Putting everything back in order at the end of the day can be tedious and risky in terms of mistakes. Volume Consolidation in Trade Processor deals with that by automatically cleaning up, ensuring there’s no confusion. That, in turn, makes the broker’s life easier, and they maintain an excellent service level.
• In times of volatility, risks present themselves, and using the A/B-risk tool ensures that traders’ funds are protected and that brokers don’t miss out on profits either.

Brokerage Business Intelligence (BBI)

We’ve seen many variations in business intelligence in the market over the years. There are pattern analyses and basic recommendations, such as going with an A-book for profitable orders and a B-book for less profitable orders, as well as many other things.

With TFB, we focus on analysing trading behaviour patterns, such as:

• Traders with large profits
• Exotic instrument users
• Algo-traders
• Big deposits

We have behaviour patterns that we showcase through filters that clients can see as a report and get notified if someone follows those patterns.

So what?

Unlike many solutions on the market, our BBI functionality is built into the Trade Processor liquidity bridge. You don’t need to run separate software with data and analyse the results separately from trading. You get everything in one place, and you can make ad-hoc changes that, in turn, make a real difference. If clients notice a trend, they can change how the orders are executed. Instant changes make a big difference to the brokerage, helping minimise risks and maximise profits.

Final thoughts: reflect and improve

We can’t make the decisions for you, but we’re here to give you all the information and data in the most straightforward way possible so that whatever decision you make would be the best one in a given situation.

We're here for you if you ever need help making those decisions. Every TFB client has a dedicated account manager, and if you’re not sure who to talk to, please email sales@t4b.com. The support team is available 24/7 to assist you with any issues, and the onboarding process at the very start ensures clients are familiar and comfortable with the solutions they use.