HSBC, RBC Join JPMorgan-Backed Platform Cutting Out Voice Broker

Viren Vaghela, Bloomberg News

A logo sits on the HSBC Holdings Plc headquarter skyscraper offices in the Canary Wharf business, financial and shopping district in London, U.K., on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. HSBC has appeased investors with $3.5 billion of share buybacks, but after five years of declining revenue analysts are looking for evidence the bank is stabilizing its top line when it reports earnings Thursday. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Wematch, a financial-technology startup, said HSBC Holdings Plc and Royal Bank of Canada have joined its platform for trading euro interest rate products without middlemen, bringing the number of lenders using it to 10.

Chief Executive Officer Joseph Seroussi said two of his company’s backers, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Societe Generale SA, are also on the platform.

Wematch, which is based in Tel Aviv and has offices in London and Paris, is only handling a fraction of the trades in a market that has been reliant on so-called voice brokers, who match buyers and sellers by phone and earn lucrative fees in the process. It hopes for growth as banks’ fixed-income divisions look to cut costs.

“The market is still very much voice-driven, and we are trying to break that,’’ said Seroussi in an interview.

While electronic platforms have taken significant business away from voice brokers at companies like BGC Partners Inc. and TP ICAP Plc, they still play a significant role arranging trades in currencies, fixed income and derivatives.

Seroussi claims his company has matched over $70 billion so far across asset classes, and that more than 750 traders at banks use the platform.

The interest rate swaps market is worth $2.1 trillion a day, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

To contact the reporter on this story: Viren Vaghela in London at vvaghela1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, James Hertling