AFE Solutions, the Hong Kong-based price and market data provider owned by Reuters and Systex, is to use Radianz’s shared market infrastructure platform to deliver Midst, the Taiwanese stock and futures market information service developed by Systex, to major financial institutions in Hong Kong and Asian countries outside Taiwan. AFE has been a Radianz client for three years.
“With 10,000 financial services sites connected worldwide, Radianz is by far the most efficient way for AFE to connect customers to our services,” explains Francis Lau, CEO of AFE. “This agreement allows us to use our existing connectivity to Radianz in order to realize a short- and long-term return on our I.T. investment. In the near term, we will save money and get faster access to customers and revenue for Midst. Longer term, we will be able to further leverage the Radianz infrastructure as we roll-out additional products and services, which will lead to even greater efficiencies.”
Michael Haney, a senior analyst at Celent Communications, describes the Asian marketplace as highly fragmented and divided between emerging and mature economies. “Essential to the continued growth and convergence of these Asian markets are access to information and the development of the related supporting infrastructure,” he says. “The Midst service over Radianz supports both of these needs by supplying real-time financial information from around the region and the world over a next-generation IP platform.”
Financial institution IT spending in China has a compounded annual growth rate of 23.9 percent, according to a Celent analysis. “As AFE continues to expand its distribution of Midst and other products by using IP-based connectivity platforms such as Radianz, AFE will be able to help banks in the region incorporate a more efficient and cost-effective set of services,” Haney concludes.
“The expanded relationship with AFE creates great opportunities for us in the Asian marketplace,” adds Richard Man, Radianz Head of Sales, Asia Pacific. “We already have a well established market of more than 2,000 customer locations in Asia and through AFE we look forward to extending this base even further.”
Since March 2001, Radianz has been providing AFE with a platform that supports IP-multicast technology and enables AFE to deliver its flagship product, AFE Stock Channel, to financial institutions in Hong Kong. AFE Stock Channel is a new-generation financial information product complete with streaming audio and video, and features that provide brokers with secure communications for order routing, instant messaging, electronic trading, and more. Midst is a real-time market data system for the Taiwanese equities market.
AFE Solutions Ltd, a “one-stop-shop” solutions provider for financial information services and online stock trading platform for the Greater China Region. It was established in 1986, AFE is a joint venture company of Reuters and Systex Corporation.