Cees, please tell us a little about when you started eFXO and what you were setting out to do.
After doing an option pricing system for three banks, I began talking to five other banks about building an option pricing system. The thing I hate most about starting a system is all the ground work, which normally takes me about a year. So I decided that I wanted to do this just one more time, but as my own company so I was guaranteed that I would never have to do this again. When I told the five banks they could buy a system, they all said no and nobody was interested. I decided to give myself 2 years to build the core, but we had our first client within 6 months.
Options are fairly complex instruments. How did you gain the experience to launch the company?
I started in 1997 in the FX options back office at ABN AMRO. A trader, Jerome Cohen, was frequently asking me stuff on programming, so one day he asked me if I could do DDE data feed on Windows, as they were upgrading Fenics to Fenics 2000Q1, which required DDE. I had just read Petzold on Windows programming, so I showed him the chapter with DDE. So the front office hired me and after a year we decided to replace Fenics as we had loads of wishes and we couldn’t change anything on their system.
How comprehensive is your product suite and what range of services do you offer?
Doing pricing systems for multiple banks teaches you that no bank is internally organised the same way, so I did not believe in a one size fits all solution. However I do believe in the power of one single code base. So we decided to create a build system in which we can have customised components per client.
So, for example our efxostp module sends a trade for booking. So for client XYZ, we have to include a module efxostpxyz.so, which is a lib loaded by efxostp and that contains the code to translate a trade to the destination format, MxML for example, and also includes the layer logic, so it can be send over MQ, a webservice or Kafka for example.
What types of firms are you providing these solutions for?
Our biggest clients are banks that are market makers, or firms that want to be brokers, or want to be a market maker on multi dealer platforms like Bloomberg, FXall etc. We also provide a module that allows OTC market makers to connect to CME and similar solution for SGX is in progress. But we can also do smaller stuff. If a tier 1 bank has a FIX API and they want to be on a MDP then we can do the link for them.
We also provide services: Trade STP for booking trades from the brokers for example. We also have a unique exercise service for which the first people have signed up. Personally I have never understood why this was never automated as it is not difficult to do, but I am hoping this now takes off as that will provide new opportunities for creating 100% robots! We also have a Vol forecast service, as we want to have a service that historically determines which market events are important and what are the potential weightings for a trader to put there.
Another type of clients are private investors and smaller banks. They either use our screens to use direct liquidity from banks or you can use API’s to connect to MDP platforms like Bloomberg, Fenics Direct or Digital Vega and we book the trades for them.
How do you make your software available to clients and what options do they have for accessing and using it?
Simple ./build xyz
This gives a build for client xyz from the latest repo. The system automatically puts in the recent date and numbers the release. So today is 26th May 2025 and repo is on 14387, so release will give a file xyz_25.5.26.14387.rhel8.tar.gz. If the client uses rhel9 then of course it is build against rhel9.
Getting the file to a client is normally done by uploading it to the internet somewhere. There are so many solution for that these days.
What work are you doing to add to your current product portfolio?
Challenges and changes come from clients. We upgraded our logon, so it supports OAUTH2 as we had a client who wanted to logon using Microsoft Azure. But we also make sure that we support everything, so new platforms like OptAxe and SpectrAxe are supported by new adaptors from our side.
We are also checking to see if we can create a service for independent pricing of an FX option. And similarly we would also like to create a service like the DIGITEC/360T Swaps data feed, but now for FX options. That can also replace the Totem file. And we are working on a tool to manage O/N options. Similar to our Gamma Hedger, but for this we are definitely going to be dependent on our exercise service.
Why are FX market participants increasingly being attracted to partner with eFXO and what feedback are clients giving you about what they like about using your software and services?
I hope people are using our software because it always works and is reliable. When I started at ABN, they (ABN AMRO Sydney) would call me in the night if something was wrong. Next working day I only had one mission: if that same thing happens again then the system should keep working. This is still the way I think. I hate doing support and especially seeing something that went wrong in the past again so I like to use the coffee rule: if you did something wrong then you need to buy coffee for the entire team!
If clients like using our software and services I hope they tell others. If they don’t like something then I hope they tell us.
How can trading firms learn more about eFXO?
They will have to buy me coffee! Or visit https://efxo.com/