BST Awards 2024: Best buy-side execution venue—360T

Overview

360T, a Frankfurt-based multilateral trading facility (MTF) and swap execution facility (SEF), is designed to allow buy-side firms to reduce their execution costs, increase trader productivity, minimize operational risks and gain access to better pricing. It does this through multiple execution platforms, unique datasets, analytics tools, algo products, and ancillary services like outsourced liquidity management. These tools address the various challenges facing participants in the global FX markets where in excess of $7.5 trillion is traded daily.

The solution  

Through a combination of proprietary data, workflow solutions and customizable automation tools, 360T enables buy-side firms to handle large order flows while minimizing operational risks by automating parts, or all, of their trading operations. The analytics, data, liquidity management, algos and other tools offered by 360T allow buy-side firms to improve their execution outcomes and reduce market impact, leading to improved returns for investors and stakeholders.

Secret sauce  

360T’s buy-side offering is designed to meet the needs of a range of buy-side firms—hedge funds, corporate treasuries, traditional/long-only asset managers and private equity firms—and delivers a range of execution tools suited to each. It delivers three technology releases per year, allowing it to remain agile and responsive to the evolving need of the buy side.

Recent milestones

• Launched energy and cryptocurrency trading in response to buy-side demand
• Added a regulatory update allowing central administration of funds globally under different regimes
• Developed new workflow solutions like “split risk” and “mixed givens,” which have delivered cost reductions and time savings across trading desks

Future objectives

• Will partner with an independent algo provider to offer EMS users access to non-bank FX algos
• Will develop a new AI tool that will recommend optimized bank baskets to buy-side firms for trades based on a range of factors
• Will create a new request-for-streaming dashboard for FX options trading for corporates
• Will further automate netting strategies that can be deployed to optimize portfolios for asset managers

Why they won

360T, a subsidiary of Frankfurt-based Deutsche Börse since 2015, has enjoyed a successful few years in these and other WatersTechnology awards, winning this category three years in succession and walking away with the best market data provider category in the 2024 WatersTechnology Asia Awards. 360T is so much more than just another trading/execution venue―it is its very own FX ecosystem, connecting some 2,600 buy-side firms of all shapes and sizes and with 200 liquidity providers, with the primary intention of making executions for its buy-side clients as streamlined and transparent as possible. Not only does it provide reliable, high-quality liquidity, but the range of ancillary tools and services it provides like its eponymous EMS, which won the best EMS category in last year’s BST Awards, make it a highly compelling proposition for the buy side.

This category has been won by a number of high-profile names in past years, including Liquidnet, Instinet and MarketAxess, although who would bet against 360T making it four wins on the bounce in next year’s BST Awards?