Fortis Bank has agreed a three year contract with Radianz to supply connectivity to buy-side clients. In a joint announcement, Fortis Bank said it had selected Radianz’s infrastructure because it specialises in financial services transactions, and provides efficient and cost-effective access to clients and other key providers serving the financial industry.
“Radianz provides a critical link to financial institutions worldwide, including 39 of the top 40 buy-side firms,” says Geert Vanderbeke executive director of Brokerage Services for Fortis Bank. “It also enables more efficient access to a wide range of data and trading applications across the straight-through processing chain.”
Fortis also says Radianz’s infrastructure enables its staff and clients to submit indications of interest (IOIs), route orders, execute trades, and perform other functions based on the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol.
“With the adoption of FIX and direct access mechanisms, investment managers have gained unprecedented control over how and where trades are executed. Brokers are responding to the challenges before them by using technology that makes it easy for customers to do business with them,” says Tim Lind, senior analyst at Tower Group, the leading research and consulting firm focused on the global financial services industry. “Utilizing the right market infrastructure will help brokers deliver the execution services customers demand without having to deal with the support issues related to network installations or configuration changes. This approach provides more time to develop client relationships and leaves network administration to the real experts.”
Last year, Fortis Investments began using Radianz’s infrastructure to connect major sell-side brokerages around the world to a new FIX-based system used to transmit orders.