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Welcome back to the C-Suite, a once a month interview where we speak to top executives in the online trading industry.
This month we’re talking to VantoFX Co-Founder Arthur Kbejan.
Arthur has worked in the in trading industry for 15 years and launched VantoFX last year.
A lot of people reading this will already be familiar with yourself but can you give some background on your career and how you ended up founding VantoFX?
Sure, I started off at GFT in 2010. Originally I was brought in to do their IT systems but I don’t like to be too robotic in my role in general and, more than usual, the business really interested me – so I wanted to understand how everything worked.
GFT was great because they let me rotate across different departments, like sales, dealing, compliance, and so on. The result was that I got really familiar with how brokerages work, which has been useful knowledge to have.
In 2013 I left and moved to Sydney, to help set up Invast, which originally was going to be a retail broker but ended up morphing into an LP. From there I went on to work at oneZero, Multibank, and Tickmill, mainly in senior IT roles.
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And is VantoFX with outside investment or you started the business yourself?
We have no outside investors. Myself and my business partner had the funds to start the company. Funnily enough, I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on how to raise capital but we didn’t want to do it.
Why did you decide to start VantoFX? Starting a broker is a stressful thing to do!
There are two main reasons. Firstly, I wanted to create a transparent, fair broker, where the client has all the information, tools, and technology they need to do well. When you understand the backend technology of brokers, you know that a lot of the time that’s not happening.
The other reason was efficiency. I believe a lot of brokers are overstaffed and this actually makes them worse and more inefficient, rather than better. So things like onboarding, payments, support.
A lot of these areas of the business don’t require that many people. When you combine that with better technology, which I believe we have, I think you can run a very streamlined operation, which is something I wanted to do.
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When you say transparent, what do you mean exactly?
When you work on the technology side for many years like I have, you understand how simple it is for brokers to do things that mess with the end client’s trades. We are not doing that. That’s the reason we chose to use cTrader – because you can’t do anything to edit or change trades.
The other thing I’d say is that a lot of firms are moving to become something like banks or to pretend to be. Why? We are here to let people trade, we aren’t going to pretend to be something we’re not.
Do you think the average end client is aware of the point you made about cTrader?
Some of them yes, because there are lots of people out there that actively look for brokers with cTrader and we are getting some of them as customers. But there are obviously lots that don’t know. Part of what we’re doing at VantoFX is making them aware of that fact.
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You are competing against huge brands with massive budgets. How do you do that?
Firstly we work with partners, which is something that’s starting to proceed well. The other point is technology and streamlining the business. When you make it very simple and easy to onboard and trade, it makes it much easier to get clients. You do also get people coming to you organically, even if you’re a smaller brand.
Something I have heard is that a lot of new brokers start, assuming it will be easy to get IBs and begin making money. But things don’t often turn out that way. Just like getting a direct client relies a lot on brand and trust, so too do IB relationships.
That’s 100% correct and it’s the main reason we have been able to get some initial partnerships going – these are people we already knew, who trust us, and so want to work with us. But there are absolutely IBs I could offer a 40% mark up to and they still wouldn’t work with us today. It takes time but we’ll get there.
Right now you just have an SVG entity, do you think you’ll expand and get other licenses?
Yes, we’re getting an additional regulatory license now. I don’t want to comment too much on that as we’re still in the process of getting it.
Having worked across different parts of the business, do you think there is one area that is more likely to make you succeed if you start a broker than another?
It’s funny – a lot of people who start a broker assume that the function they were in previously was the most important. So you have a sales guy that starts and then realises 6 to 12 months in, ‘oh wait, I actually do need to have good dealing technology to make this work’.
Every part of the business is important. What matters the most is making them work efficiently and smoothly together. We try to keep things simple – onboarding, funding, trading. Making those processes smooth is what makes the business run well and it requires all the different functions in the business to be aligned.
What’s the end goal? Are you going to be the next IC Markets or something like that?
I want us to be a company that sticks to its core values – being transparent and fair to the customer, with amazing technology and smooth processes. That’s why we set up VantoFX. What happens in the long-run? We’ll have to see what happens.
You’ve started a new broker at a time when lots of people seem really pessimistic about the industry. Are you not afraid that we’re all going to get killed by regulation and costs?
People have been saying the industry is dead since I started working in it 15 years ago. Yes there are regulatory changes but you can always adapt and overcome them.
The real problem for me is actually operations and people. How do you manage those things to make your broker as efficient as possible? Regulation won’t kill your business, inefficiencies and bad technology will.
