Exclusive: One on One With Saxo’s Kim Fournais – Social Trading Launch, Networking, and More

In this week’s Executive Interview, Forex Magnates had the privilege to sit down with Kim Fournais, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Saxo Bank, for a video interview. The video was filmed during last week’s Forex Magnates London Summit.

During the interview, among different topics, we asked Fournais about the importance of industry network events, handling the current tough business environment for brokers, and the upcoming launch of their new social trading platform (more on that below).

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Key points of the interview:

1:00 Fournais speaks about the importance of ‘seeing what is going on’ around the industry and at other brokers.

1:30 What it’s like to go from being an upstart, to the ‘big broker’ that many in the conference want to grab business from.

2:30 Talking about keeping connected with former Saxo employees.

4:00 Dealing with the EU financial crisis and low volatility markets by focusing on growth areas and exiting weaker markets and products.

6:00 Difficult markets are nothing new “as long as we have humans, and human psychology, we’ll have crisis”.

8:00 Trader interests are shifting from just forex. For the first time, equities and CFD products are being traded more than FX (this trend was also taking place at FXCM).

9:30 Answering questions about the upcoming launch of Saxo’s social trading product. “Social trading is here to stay” with planned launch in January. Product will be multi-asset and market to both new and existing products.

11:15 Value add that Fournais believes Saxo Bank will bring to the market with their social offering; a. multi-asset platform  b. content  c. intertwined within the social experience.

Social Trading

As mentioned in the interview, Saxo Bank plans to launch a social trading product to the customers in January of next year. The product will be integrated within Saxo’s TradingFloor.com analysis site. As written about in the past, this follows the trend that has been taking place at Saxo where TradingFloor.com has become more integrated within the broker’s trading platform and website.

Upon launch, the new TradingFloor.com will become the bank’s social trading platform, and run alongside that of Saxo’s existing desktop, web-based, and mobile app platforms. Although TradingFloor will become a platform itself, the website will continue to provide open access of content to both Saxo account and non-account holders.

During the interview, Fournais stated that Saxo Bank has been a leader in ‘democratizing trading’ during its 21 year existence, as they were an early player to bringing foreign exchange and other asset classes to the retail market. He added that this is their goal with social trading, to become a leader in the market by combining their multi-asset trading environment and existing content that they distribute, for social trading.

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