Saxo Bank is to give traders and developers access to its trading infrastructure via a new Rest-based open API, ushering in a new era of collaborative innovation.
The move, which covers Saxo’s multi-asset trading and back office infrastructure, will allow its partners, clients and external developers to customise their trading experience and create new revenue streams, says the Danish bank.
The REST-based API will be released to developers via a dedicated portal with comprehensive documentation, libraries, sample code and technical support to help in the creation of tailor-made apps on Saxo Bank’s infrastructure.
For Saxo’s institutional clients, including white label partners, the API will ease the integration of Saxo’s trading and investing capabilities into their own applications and systems.
Matteo Cassina, head of business lines, Saxo Bank, says OpenAPI will cover the whole trading lifecycle including access to over 30,000 instruments, and the the ability to monitor positions, balances and margin.
“This is a step change not just for Saxo but for our industry as a whole. Our commitment is underpinned by our mission to democratise trading and make markets more efficient through innovation," he says. "For a long time the industry has grappled with the dilemma of building versus buying, but the pace of technological change has made it impossible for institutions to maintain an edge when it comes to innovation. The result is a paradigm shift from a business-to-customer economy to a so-called collaborative economy."
The Saxo OpenAPI is the foundation of SaxoTraderGO, the next generation platform launched earlier this year and which now caters for 30% of the bank's clients. The new platform will be available in October to Saxo’s white label clients, consisting of over 120 financial institutions globally.
Christian Hammer, head of platforms, Saxo Bank, says: “Rest is already widespread among tech giants who have built entire business models around Open API. The financial industry however has been late to the party. Some banks already offer access to third party developers to build specific features or apps but we are offering much deeper functionality and access to our entire trading infrastructure. We are essentially decoupling our infrastructure from the user experience to become a trading facilitator.”
Saxo's initiative comes just a day after a collection of fintech players, including Nasdaq, Yodlee, Tradier and Level39, joined forces to create an ecosystem that connects developers with APIs, signaling the growing importance of open access to code as a key to innovation within finance.