Middle- and back-office functions as important as trading speed.

Creating a single platform that can meet all of a broker-dealer’s business process needs, from order routing and execution to the labor intensive, back-office tasks, is a key objective for trading technology providers.

The problem is that few industry vendors have kept pace with the ever-changing definition of straight-through-processing, and few offer a truly cost-efficient, turn-key enterprise solution.

OMEX Systems, which designs and develops multi-asset trading systems for equities, options and futures trading. purports to have the solution.

OMEX is a neutral, real-time platform that provides direct access to major global exchanges, dark pools, crossing networks, algo providers and leading market makers through a single trading interface. OMEX can be white labeled and branded to your firm’s own trademark and look-and-feel.

“It’s a nimble, yet aggressive enterprise with a platform that actually meets the needs of virtually every business process one can find within a broker-dealer or buy-side firm, from order routing and execution to back-office accounting to regulatory reporting, all in one single platform,” John Houlahan, chief operating officer at OMEX, told Markets Media.

OMEX counts among its customers WallachBeth Capital, an inter-market broker that provides order execution services for ETFs, exchange-traded options, listed and OTC equities, and event-driven arbitrage strategies. Clients of the firm include institutional portfolio managers, Tier 1 sell-side principal trading desks, premiere hedge funds and leading registered investment advisors.

Most EMS/OMS providers provide some back-office functionality, but not all. “We are providing a single platform that can replace a multitude of front-to-back office systems,” said Houlahan.

OMEX conform to SEC Rule 15c3-5, a new regulatory edict that requires brokers who provide sponsored access to exchanges to first establish credit thresholds before permitting customer orders to be routed for execution.

The credit-check component is one that OMEX has had in production for some time.
“Our broker-neutral system has seamlessly processed the credit-checking, routing, execution and post-trade administration of more than 500,000 option contracts daily, which is equivalent to 15% of the daily CBOE volume, and we’re doing this in markets that are moving 500 Dow points intraday on a multi-day basis,” Houlahan said.

“However much the high-frequency trading crowd is focused on ‘next-to pico-second speed’ with respect to order message delivery and turnaround times, our customer base, which includes leading institutional brokers, is necessarily focused on low latency, but within the context of responsible risk management,” he said.