Citi Markets & Banking’s CitiConnectSM for Securities, a trade execution-to-settlement platform, is expanding its offering by adding over 400 brokers in the United States from the NYFIX Marketplace. The Marketplace network enables broker-dealers, institutions and exchanges to interact electronically with one another.
“By accessing these additional brokers on the NYFIX Marketplace,” says Curtis Brill, managing director of electronic markets, Securities and Fund Services, Citi Markets & Banking, “CitiConnect for Securities provides clients with access to FIX connectivity for electronic trading and order routing over one of the financial industry’s largest communications networks. This capability greatly expands our clients’ market coverage and liquidity options in trading their current equity flows. Using the NYFIX Marketplace can also speed connectivity to trading counterparties, since so many firms are already connected to the members of that community.”
CitiConnect for Securities is an integrated online operating platform for equities execution, settlement and safekeeping. With a broker-dealer base that provides access to 45 markets around the world, CitiConnect for Securities offers clients broad market coverage and increased liquidity.
“Because CitiConnect for Securities is an ‘open platform,'” explains Citi’s Brill, “we can continue to expand the scope of its capabilities to include more asset classes, geographies and counterparties (e.g., custodians, broker dealers, etc.), so that additional market participants can take advantage of its benefits.”
For clients, CitiConnect for Securities’ offerings include access to major markets, interaction with a broker of choice, real-time trade life cycle information and automatic generation and sending of settlement instructions to Citi for clearing and custody.
“Clients also benefit from the combined strengths of the NYFIX Marketplace for executing, and Citi as local market custodian, with CitiConnect for Securities,” says Brill. “Clients can extend this benefit to other brokers as desired, leveraging CitiConnect for Securities’ open architecture and use of industry-standard messaging protocols for easy connectivity to additional service providers.”