SMARTS Opens US Office
Thursday, 01 October 2009 10:00
SMARTS Group, the worldwide leader in market surveillance systems today announced the opening of an office in the US. The opening of the New York office is timed to coincide with the release of the US version of its SMARTS.broker surveillance platform.
SMARTS Group is an Australian owned financial technology company which derives 95% of its revenue from international securities exchanges, regulators and broking firms. “The US market presents significant growth opportunities for SMARTS. We now have two US exchange customers, BATS and NADEX, and in late October we will launch a US version of our SMARTS.broker platform,”said Dr Andreas Furche, CEO of SMARTS Group Holdings.
SMARTS.broker is currently being piloted by a leading US investment house, “We are encouraged by the initial feedback from our pilot customer. They are impressed by the comprehensiveness and usability of the system and recognise the advantages of partnering with SMARTS’ as the global leader in market surveillance systems,”said Dr Furche.
Whilst selling to international exchanges and regulators for over 15 years and broking firms for the last five, SMARTS has taken a conservative approach to entering the US market. “Our US strategy has been to build upon our leadership position in Europe and Asia which has established the credibility and international reputation required by US firms to support their technology investment decision,”said Dr Furche.
SMARTS expects the US will become one of their biggest if not the biggest market by 2012, “While we have a centralised organisational model with development, technical support and administration located in Australia, we acknowledge the most effective business development strategy is to have customer interface teams close to the customers. This is the model we adopted in Europe where we have a presence of ten sales and customer support professionals, establishing Europe as our most successful region,”concluded Dr Furche.
On October 28, SMARTS will launch the US version of SMARTS.broker at the Australian Consulate in New York. The product has been in development for the last 12 months with a focus on compliance and market integrity. With the attention on market integrity following the Global Financial Crisis, SMARTS believes this is the right time to invest in the US market.
SMARTS has appointed Michael Karbouris, currently Director of Business Development for SMARTS’ broking business in the Asia Pacific, to lead the US operations.