IG Group announced this week that it has launched a new prime brokerage unit under the brand ‘IG Prime.’ The FXPB product is intended for a client segment that includes mid-sized hedge funds and family offices and other buy-side institutions, which are experiencing challenges accessing the wholesale ‎‎foreign exchange price matching community via a prime brokerage model‎. ‎

The UK spread better has originally launched its prime brokerage services back in 2006 and has recently strengthened its dedicated institutional offering that IG expects to yield a potential market opportunity of around £500 million.

IG Prime business introduces a liquidity pool offering that connects investors via a single venue. It combines web-based trading with real-time reporting and is supported by IG’s global client support network, spanning 16 countries worldwide.

“Our advanced trading platforms are engineered for speed, stability and resilience, routinely processing multi-million trades per month and providing access to more than 40 global financial markets,” said Simon Myers, Chief Technology Officer at IG.

IG expand PP business with new hires

The increase in banking regulation, which mandates increased minimum ‎levels of capital and increases in reporting expenses, has resulted in a lot of ‎banks leaving the prime broking space‏.‏ ‎The exit of legacy players in the prime ‎brokerage space has indeed allowed new offerings to rapidly ‎gain customers and fill the void. ‏

“Hedge Fund clients are more focused on cost than ever as the industry has gone mainstream, but they still want the comfort of a secure well capitalised counterparty,” said Max Hayden, Global Head of Prime Brokerage Sales.

IG has recently hired FX veteran Max Hayden to the role of its Global Head of Institutional Sales with a focus on the UK, Switzerland, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Asia-Pacific. Most recently, Hayden served as CEO of multi-asset brokerage and Fintech provider ITI Capital for nearly two years.

The move to hire Hayden is clearly intended to boost bottom-line sales and expand the reach of IG Group operations in the prime brokerage field. The experience he accrued during his nearly three decades stint in the prime brokerage field likely influenced IG’s decision to hire him to guide its institutional sales department.