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Written by: Todd Shriber, Advisorpedia
Clearinghouses are often viewed as the middlemen of financial markets, and the services they provide are essential.
Independent broker-dealers know as much and those looking to grow and streamline their firms also know the value in establishing the right clearinghouse relationship. Axos Clearing, a subsidiary of Axos Financial, is a premier partner for establishing durable, high-quality clearing relationships.
“Axos Clearing serves a broad range of FINRA member independent broker dealers,” according to Michael Scaplen, Senior Vice President at Axos Clearing. “Our correspondents consist of online and active-trader broker dealers, including broker dealers that serve both domestic and foreign customer accounts and transact in foreign securities. We work with introducing broker dealers to establish service offerings that complement their businesses and help them to compete in the highly regulated and competitive financial services market. We measure our success in terms of our ability to help our correspondents succeed.”
Not All Clearing Firms Are Created Equal
Axos Clearing’s technology solutions are custom designed to meet the needs of the independent broker-dealers it supports. And its trading technology integrates information and analytics from a variety of data providers, and delivers sophisticated order execution functionality and post-trade processing applications to ensure timely and accurate trade execution and settlement.
Axos’ front and back-office systems are built to support high trading volumes in a real-time processing environment and to interface with multiple trading platforms and market data providers.
“Our technology offerings and partnerships with top industry providers enable the firms we serve to effectively navigate changes and employ the latest advancements in the financial services space. Our experienced team provides relationship-based service, getting to know each business to provide the support needed,” adds Scaplen.
Another area where Axos Clearing can potentially add value for clients is the bottom line and what’s not to like about that? There was a time when broker-dealers that self-cleared were seen as industry pioneers, but that independence can pinch profitability.
Effective self-clearing entails allocation of capital in the form of time and human capital in the back office – both of which can be drags on profitability, confirming the viability of a relationship with Axos Clearing.
On a related note, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is proposing rules changes pertaining to “risks in the clearance and settlement of securities.” A changing regulatory environment is one more example of the importance of working with the right clearing firm.
More Axos Advantages
Axos Clearing offers a broad, encompassing menu of clearing services, including but not limited to application programming interfaces (APIs), cash management, fixed-income clearing, investor communications, portfolio margin, retirement planing and securities lending.
“APIs allow teams to leverage existing ideas instead of taking time and resources to recreate the tools. This kind of agility can support smaller teams and allow scalability to firms of any size with access to the newest resources,” according to Scaplen.
Tech-driven clearing firms such as Axos have been harnessing the power of APIs for years and continue to drive change on that front, keeping up with the rapidly evolving demands of clients.
To learn more about Axos Clearing, please visit www.axosclearing.com.
Related: Finding the Risk, Protecting Financial Stability with Jeremy Franzluebbers