How Adaptive took ADSS’ retail trading platform to the next level

Abu Dhabi-based financial services firm, ADS Securities LLC (‘ADSS’) was founded in 2010 and is one of the largest leveraged brokers in the Middle East, offering thousands of financial instruments across a wide range of CFDs, incl. currencies, indices, commodities and other asset classes. ADSS’ commitment to delivering the highest quality products within a robust culture of risk and compliance has made it a trusted partner for institutional and retail clients globally.

To support its transformational growth strategy, ADSS partnered with Adaptive to build a new flagship trading platform for its Middle Eastern and global client base – supporting growth in highly competitive markets.

Challenge:

Building a cross-asset retail trading platform for a diverse user base, from casual investors to professional traders, with key features including:

• 24/7 high availability.
• An engaging, intuitive user interface on mobile and web.
• Support for a high volume of traffic.

Solution:

Adaptive leveraged its technology accelerator platform and in-depth industry expertise to design and create:

• A high-throughput, low-latency and fault-tolerant technology backend.
• An elegant, intuitive, high-performance web and mobile user interface, with consistent experiences across all devices.

Building a world beating broker in a hot market

Retail trading has surged in recent years. For retail brokers, increased participation has created a lucrative opportunity but has also heightened competition. In Europe and the Middle East, retail trading volumes have grown significantly across asset classes over the past decade – a trend we can expect to continue, as the trading boom shows no sign of slowing.

With so many readily available products to bolt onto retail trading platforms, differentiation has become a crucial battleground for firms looking to take on an increasingly busy field of brokers. Brokers are therefore seeking greater technological and experiential differentiation through their platforms – giving them the option to add new asset classes and features to adapt to the shifting needs of individual traders in order to future-proof their businesses.

To meet these challenges, ADSS, the Abu Dhabi-based online trading and investing firm, sought to take control of its technology to give the business an edge in a highly competitive market by building its own cutting-edge cross-asset platform.

The brief

With clients in a range of locations, from its home markets in the Middle East to beyond, and from relatively new investors to highly experienced semi-professional traders, owning technology that can serve a diverse set of trading needs is a key strategic priority for the business. Since 2020, the brokerage has been on a project to improve all aspects of its technology – from its front-end trading platform, to its databases, onboarding processes and risk reporting. It decided to replace its legacy white-label solution with a high performance, cloud-based proprietary system.

ADSS approached Adaptive following a referral from a large consultancy, based on the firm’s extensive expertise in designing and building scalable and resilient trading platforms at speed. Adaptive was appointed as a long-term partner that could offer strategic advice, platform & experience (UX) design and development, as well as management of the platform post-build – doing the heavy lifting and ensuring the highest quality end-product

The challenge

Each project presents a unique set of challenges. For ADSS, there were two key issues to overcome:

Creating a highly personalised platform:

Offering a tailored trading experience to such a diverse user base is challenging. The tools and market access required by the casual trader will be very different to that needed by a professional trader, managing large complex orders. The Adaptive team therefore had to address individual trading styles and permissions to deliver tailored user experiences (UX) across web and mobile applications – for those trading at their desks or on the move.

Building around significant change:

The Adaptive team was charged with designing and building the front-end platform while ADSS improved the back end and downstream systems that would feed into the project. Simultaneously designing, developing and implementing a sophisticated trading system while critical back-office operations were being optimised was a logistical challenge, requiring close coordination between Adaptive and ADSS teams and continuous automated testing.

The solution

Key to the development of ADSS’ new retail trading platform was Adaptive’s Aeron® solution, a high-throughput, low-latency and fault-tolerant technology used by f inancial services firms globally to build sophisticated, cross-asset class trading systems. Leveraging Aeron technology as well as Adaptive’s UX/UI and solution design expertise, the team was able to:

Consult on key focus areas:

Understanding how competitors try to distinguish themselves is an essential step in addressing how to set a trading platform apart. Adaptive therefore conducted a competitor audit to help ADSS assess how to effectively differentiate its platform.

Create bespoke user experiences on Mobile and Web:

The design ethos tapped into the native experiences that users have come to expect and allows freedom to switch between mobile and web whenever suits. Leveraging the design and experience (UX) expertise of Adaptive allowed for accelerated workflow design and concepting that fed seamlessly into implementation. With a solid design system in place, the team will be able to further leverage ADSS’ data on individuals’ previous trading behaviour, looking at favourite asset classes and strategies, as well as market data and live news to customise the platform to a traders’ specific preferences.

Deploy lightning-fast testing:

Using Adaptive’s proprietary automated testing technology, the team was able to automatically test new features thousands of times on web and mobile, ensuring that the system was resilient in any situation.

Ensure fast delivery:

Aeron technology is an accelerator. Using Aeron coupled with consulting expertise, Adaptive was able to deliver the new platform in a significantly shorter timescale than if ADSS were to build the platform from scratch. From conception to production, including analysis, experience and visual design, development, testing and deployment, the web client was delivered in 9 months. On the backend, the platform used the client’s pricing engines and market connectivity and acted as an OMS and a pre-trade risk management system.

Allow for future development:

We have seen huge changes in retail trading in recent years – a trend that will almost certainly continue. Having the flexibility to cater for future demand, whether adding new features or asset classes, means that ADSS can evolve with its customers.

The end product

Adaptive built an entirely new, resilient proprietary trading platform, which runs 24/7 on the cloud, both on the web and mobile apps, making ADSS the first retail broker to operate exclusively on the cloud. The platform is highly scalable and capable of handling large trade volumes, while its trading interface can be altered for individual trading styles.