Swedish fintech Itiviti is investing heavily to integrate its order management system (OMS) capability into fixed income and FX across its markets in Asia Pacific, the US and Europe.

The strategy responds to an accelerating shift towards passive investing and index-type products, which Ofir Gefen, Itiviti’s managing director, Asia Pacific, says is driving an increased focus on execution quality across a growing range of asset classes.

“If you look globally, a lot more investors are buying index-type products,” Gefen told Global Investor. “One of the interesting ways to look at these is that your decision in what to invest in is pretty much being made by the index. That is where the quality of execution becomes a very important factor.”

Gefen was commenting after Itiviti won the Equity Trading System of the Year category for its sell-side order management system (OMS) in the FOW Asia Capital Markets Awards 2020. The system connects to more than 200 venues and offers access to order routing networks with over 800 buy-side firms and 700-plus brokers.

“What we’ve seen happen first to cash equities is now spreading into other asset classes,” Gefen said. “It is definitely already on the way into listed derivatives, it’s now making its way into fixed income, and to some extent it also got into FX.”

As a result of this shift, Itiviti is targeting expansion in the fixed income and FX worlds. “This is really where the growth is going and this is one of the key things we’re doing at Itiviti,” Gefen said.

“We believe that the trading desk of banks and brokers will become more and more electronified, or automated, exactly like what happened with cash equities.”

In Asia Pacific, Itiviti has grown significantly in recent years, notably in China, India, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia.

In the last 12 months, this has included the addition of low-latency gateways to the Stock Exchange of Thailand and the Thailand Futures Exchange, as well as the addition of clients such as Huatai Financial in Hong Kong, PT Bahana Sekuritas in Indonesia and SMBC Nikko Securities in Japan.

Below is the recording of the full interview with Itiviti's Ofir Gefen.