Awards for Asia special

World-famed for offering one of the most traded derivatives contracts, the Korea Exchange is also rapidly establishing itself as a leading vendor of trading and clearing technology for exchanges.

Over the last twenty years the firm has been selling technology to regional exchanges across trading, clearing and settlement, market surveillance and front office and depository systems.

It has implemented projects in Vietnam, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand among other emerging markets.

Hot off the back of its FOW Award for the implementation at the Thailand Stock Exchange last year, its work with the Baku Stock Exchange in Azerbaijan won the praise of the judges for the Awards for Asia 2016.

KRX successfully developed and implemented its system for the Azerbaijan capital market in a project financed by World Bank.

KRX has not only fulfilled the technical requirements laid out by World Bank-employed consultants but managed to develop the total package, including a trading system for its Azerbaijani partner, in less than a year, including the full review of local regulations and requirements.

The trading system supports cash market and offers full derivatives trading functionality.

The trading system is based on KRX’s Exture+ trading platform, which can handle throughput of more than 20,000 transactions per second and supports stock, bonds, repo, futures and options and other asset classes on a single platform.

According to Jay Jinmo Gu, KRX Project Manager of the Azerbaijan project, the exchange can service the needs of a wide range of exchange clients.

“We offer a tailored product to exchanges. All variety of asset classes can be supported on the platform and we can fully customise the service to the needs of the individual exchange,” he said.

“Exture+ is a highly flexible platform that can be configured to a specific market and is built around the FIX protocol so it can connect to other systems.”

KRX offers its technology across three models: market establishment, market modernisation and IT infrastructure.

Its market establishment service is implemented in countries such as Laos or Cambodia that are building capital markets with no legacy.

The Azerbaijan project was a market modernisation, building on existing technology and providing extensive consultation on the requirements of the Baku Stock Exchange.

KRX is dominant in the South East Asian region and is now targeting growth in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

The exchange has a number of deals and ongoing implementations in the pipeline, and, if its success in Asia is anything to go by, its expansion into new markets will be rapid.