FNG Exclusive Interview… One of the more interesting companies (and names) in the Retail FX sector has certainly been MahiFX, which recently announced that it was rebranding to MahiMarkets. The company has also sold its FCA-licensed Retail FX brokerage business (which also rebranded under new ownership, to Scale Markets), to focus on its core multi-asset trading technology.

We thought it was a good time to catch up with Mahi co-founder Susan Cooney, and find out more about the decision process behind the changes, and of course what’s ahead.

FNG: Hi Susan, and thanks for joining us today. Please let us know a little more about what you decided to rebrand the company from MahiFX to MahiMarkets. Did you consider a more radical rebrand to a totally different name?

Susan: Thank you for having me. Well, the name change came about as a direct result of the work we are doing for our customers. Although our background is in FX, our technology is asset agnostic, so it really came down to customer demand and meeting their growing needs outside of FX, of which there are plenty. We’ve been able to work very closely with our clients to enhance their offerings, ensuring they stay as competitive as possible. Concerning the name change, Mahi means ‘our work/our craft’ in Maori, and that is a value that remains dear to us, so we wanted to retain it in some form.

FNG: We understand that leading up to the rebrand you sold the FCA regulated B2C arm of the business, which has also since rebranded from MahiFX to Scale Capital Ltd. Can you give us some more history and insight into that decision and how it plays into your future plans for MahiMarkets.

Susan: Technology has always been at the heart of what do we and we are in a relatively unique position of being able to marry that with multiple years of trading expertise across spot and derivatives. We decided that instead of being a broker ourselves, we could help many brokers with our technology and experience. We can also enable them to expand into areas they perhaps wouldn’t be well equipped such as Options which has a barrier to entry since it requires very specific expertise and technology. Something we are fortunate to have courtesy of my Co-founder David’s extensive career in options trading.

FNG: Who are MahiMarkets’ clients? What do you see as your fundamental value proposition with those clients?

Susan: Although we happily supply technology to a range of market participants Brokers are a key focus area for us since we have fairly recent experience of operating in this space. When we built Mahi back in 2010 we were fresh from the institutional space and we built our technology to adapt to the challenges we had been facing. Traders were no longer just clickers but instead highly optimised models programmed to identify and take advantage of rate vulnerabilities.

When we arrived into retail with sophisticated technology designed to tackle many of these issues it was a little like Marty McFly from the film ‘Back to the future’ finding himself in the ’50s wearing a pair of Nikes. The retail industry was simply not there yet. However, it is now, so we are ideally placed to help many brokers adapt to the changes.

FNG: From your unique vantage point of being both a key supplier to the FX/CFD brokerage sector, as well as a former operator, how do you see the industry has changed through COVID these past 12+ months? And, what challenges do you see for the sector in the near future?

Susan: We have seen a dramatic increase in coordinating trading and EA use over the past 12 months, which possibly coincides with people being at home more due to COVID and the rise of social trading forums such as Reddit, made famous by the ‘GameStop’ events this year. Retail has attracted a whole new generation of traders, which is a double-edged sword. While large volume increases are attractive, this generation of traders can easily access EA’s designed to find arbitrage opportunities. For some brokers, this is already starting to affect them, and for others it’s likely to start, so they must be prepared.

FNG: What else can we expect to hear from MahiMarkets in the coming months?

Susan: This generation of traders is particularly risk-seeking, so we stand ready to assist brokers and other market participants in market making and risk management in more volatile markets such as Crypto, so they can quickly and easily meet demand.