By releasing its Web application-programming interface or API - a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing Web-based software applications - institutions, brokers, individual traders and developers can now automate trades, build integrations and create trading apps that use the firm's market-leading spread betting and CFD technology.

Ivan Gowan, Head of IT Development at IG, commented: "Launching IG Labs and releasing our Web Trading API is part of our ongoing strategy to offer market-leading platforms and providing a best-in-class experience across all asset classes and trading styles.

"This new service is an exciting development which promises to yield commercially sound projects with future partners while also giving our clients - be they institutions, brokers or individual traders - more control over the way they trade."

IG road tested the new service prior to launching at an internal codefest event where the tech team was given free rein to develop new projects with the API. The results demonstrate the potential benefits the firm's technology offers traders. For example, the team developed an app that allows traders to balance positions across accounts and further apps that provided a live background which interact with the API to display market data as a graph as well as historical client sentiment.

The API is made up of two parts:
• REST Trading API
• Streaming API

As with standard REST API's the data is provided in JSON format and it is client programming language agnostic, meaning a developer can build their own trading system in their language of choice - .NET, Java, JavaScript, Excel to name a few. It also means that the API can be accessed on the standard SSL port (443) and doesn't require specific firewall access in order for a client to connect. IG has provided a feature rich interactive Companion App (see labs.ig.com) to dynamically explorsee labs.ig.com) to dynamically explordynamically explore the API request and response details to help developers get started.

Available today, institutions and retail investors are able to trade a range of popular asset classes using the Web API including indices, forex, commodities, binaries and options and can access a number of IG platform features such as:
• Real-time and historical market prices
• Market instrument and client sentiment information
• Risk management tools such as stops and limits
• Review account balances and trade history
• Maintain watchlists
• Benefit from IG's great execution and low latency
• Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority

A developer community on IG Labs will be live in August with more features and enhancements scheduled over the coming months.