In a joint announcement, Fortis Bank said it selected Radianz's infrastructure because it is optimized for financial services transactions and provides efficient and cost-effective access to clients and other key providers serving the financial industry.

Geert Vanderbeke, executive director of Brokerage Services for Fortis Bank said, "Radianz provides a critical link to financial institutions worldwide, including 39 of the top 40 buy-side firms. It also enables more efficient access to a wide range of data and trading applications across the straight-through processing chain."

Radianz's infrastructure also enables financial professionals to submit indications of interest (IOIs), route orders, execute trades and perform other functions based on the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol. The infrastructure is a complete managed connectivity solution designed to meet the demanding requirements of the financial services industry. Radianz's infrastructure also gives institutions quick access to more than 10,000 financial services sites worldwide.

"With the adoption of FIX and direct access mechanisms, investment managers have gained unprecedented control over how and where trades are executed. Brokers are responding to the challenges before them by using technology that makes it easy for customers to do business with them," said Tim Lind, senior analyst at Tower Group, the leading research and consulting firm focused on the global financial services industry. "Utilizing the right market infrastructure will help brokers deliver the execution services customers demand without having to deal with the support issues related to network installations or configuration changes. This approach provides more time to develop client relationships and leaves network administration to the real experts."

Last year, Fortis Investments began using Radianz's infrastructure to connect major sell-side brokerages around the world to a new FIX-based system used to transmit orders.