Tradu Charts New Course With Tech-First Trading Platform

In the competitive world of online trading, technology leadership is increasingly becoming the differentiator between success and stagnation. 

For Tradu, a retail trading firm headquartered in London, embracing this reality has meant embarking on an ambitious journey of technological transformation.

Paul Sutherland, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Tradu, joined the company just a year ago after spending nearly two decades at some of the world’s largest financial institutions including JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

“I’d always wanted to try a smaller business and the opportunity to come to Tradu came along,” Paul explains. “The people I spoke to were fabulous, and the culture here is great, and very strong.”

For Paul, the transition from global banking giants to a more niche trading platform provider has been invigorating, though not without its challenges. The scale may be different, but the technical complexities remain.

“We’ve got a lot of incredibly talented multidisciplinary technologists here,” Paul says. “It’s very different from larger organisations where you have many people doing specialised jobs. Our people are welcoming, hardworking and highly skilled, especially our technology team.”

Tradu’s parent company, Stratos Group International, operates  FXCM, which has been successful in electronic foreign exchange trading for more than 20 years, and Tradu, which launched last year.

“We’ve got our new Tradu product launched last year with a proper startup culture – rapidly building features and rolling them out to our clients,” Paul says. “We offer CFDs, FX, crypto, stocks and we’ve recently launched an eWallet.”

The company’s vision is to provide a comprehensive platform designed specifically for seasoned traders. 

“By design, it’s a one-stop shop, multi-asset platform for active investors who consider trading to be more than just a hobby. Our platform is designed specifically to reflect their needs,” he continues.

Balancing heritage with innovation in platform developmentTradu is looking at how it can make the most of its wealth of experience and intellectual property built up over decades through scaling its technology, and establish itself as a global market leader.

“Part of my job was to help ensure that our rapid development pace aligns with our strategic goals,” Paul reveals. “We’re undertaking what is probably the biggest engineering transformation of our CFD and FX stack.”

This transformation isn't being undertaken in isolation. Tradu is working closely with several strategic technology partners, including Gehtsoft, Zensar and Cintra, to re-engineer their platform for the future.

“We want to have a proprietary technology platform that’s world-leading,” Paul notes. “We began this journey shortly before I joined, and we’re now accelerating it significantly.”

The scale of this ambition is significant, with Tradu working on a two-year roadmap in collaboration with Stratos Group’s parent company, Jefferies, to deliver a world-leading CFD and FX retail trading platform.

Throughout this transformation, the company remains focused on its primary value: putting the customer first. This ethos guides all their transformation decisions.

“Our number one value is customer first,” Paul states. “On our platforms, everything we do is oriented to what our customer, the active investor, needs.”Creating differentiation in a competitive market

The retail trading sector is competitive, but Tradu believes it has established a clear point of differentiation focused on serving serious traders with professional-grade tools.

“We’re positioned specifically for active investors, and we see ourselves as creating trading tools for serious traders,” Paul says. “We aim to differentiate our platforms from our competitors by providing the best tools for independent trading.”

This specialisation means prioritising execution speed, competitive spreads and comprehensive multi-asset capabilities, all delivered through a single platform rather than requiring traders to use multiple services for different asset classes.

“We have created one platform that performs all these functions, eliminating the need to switch between different providers,” he continues.

The company’s unique selling proposition is clear in Paul’s mind: “Our USP is a platform for both traders and investors, offering multi-asset access, delivered seamlessly to their phone or desktop with rapid execution speeds and market leading spreads.”

Cloud transformation with a hybrid approach

As with many fintech companies, Tradu is navigating the complex journey to hybrid computing, but with the additional challenge of maintaining the low-latency performance critical for trading applications.

“We’re currently focused on modernising our technology, which presents fascinating challenges for a low-latency trading business,” Paul explains.

Tradu is taking a pragmatic approach to its infrastructure decisions, considering both cloud and on-premises options based on performance requirements.

“We're working closely with our partners to create a CFD and FX proprietary trading system that leverages the best aspects of both cloud and on-premises services,” he says.

This approach is designed to provide the flexibility and scalability needed for future growth while maintaining the performance characteristics that traders demand.

“Our design approach will bring flexibility that will be game-changing in terms of reliability, delivery capability and scalability,” Paul continues. “If your customer base grows tenfold in five years, you need to ensure your platform can scale accordingly – that's our goal.”

Data-driven approach with AI adoption

While Tradu is embracing technological transformation, it retains a watchful eye on industry trends, particularly around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

“It’s easy to get caught up in technology hype cycles,” Paul observes. “Data is the lifeblood of companies like ours, securing & protecting our information is sacrosanct and this is at the forefront of thinking when exploring newer technologies.”

Tradu recognises the potential of AI to enhance their business operations and trader experience, and we have some interesting use cases for our customers and internal teams.

“AI has a role in helping businesses become more efficient and we are working with our teams to explore these opportunities,” Paul continues. “We follow the principle of ‘trust but verify’ – so we are always doubling down on ensuring each use safely & securely delivers value.”

As an example, the company is exploring ways to incorporate AI capabilities to help Tradu traders with their strategies, demonstrating our commitment to innovation.

Privacy and security as non-negotiable requirements

In an industry handling sensitive financial data, security and privacy concerns are paramount. Tradu recognises these elements not as features but as fundamental requirements.

“Our customers expect security and privacy as do our regulators,” Paul states. “We take our duty of care to our customers with the utmost seriousness.”

The company’s re-engineering efforts are also driven by the desire to implement cutting-edge security technologies, staying ahead of an evolving threat landscape.

“Part of our re-engineering effort involves implementing the latest technologies that better protect digital businesses,” he explains. “This is a constantly dynamic that requires vigilance.”

Strategic partnerships powering transformation

Tradu’s technological transformation is supported by strategic partnerships with key technology providers. Gehtsoft has been a long-term partner, playing a fundamental role in the delivery of both the FXCM and Tradu platforms.

“Gehtsoft has been absolutely fundamental to our growth with launching and driving Tradu,” Paul says. “They’re excellent engineers who help us develop software collaboratively. I can’t speak highly enough of their technical capabilities.”

Similarly, Zensar has helped Tradu to scale its brand and deliver customer-facing portals in new markets, while also supporting its operations departments and augmenting their technology teams.

“Zensar has been instrumental in bringing our Tradu brand to market,” Paul explains, noting that Tradu has subsequently built its own capability in Chennai with approximately 200 staff.

Elsewhere, Cintra brings industry expertise that helps Tradu make critical infrastructure decisions, particularly around their database layer – a crucial component for both performance and security.

“When you consider how we protect our customers’ data and privacy, the database layer is absolutely fundamental to getting that right,” Paul says. 

“We need to deliver large volumes of information to our clients with minimal latency. Having a high-performance database layer integrated with our low-latency trading stack is critically important.”

“That is our absolute focus – delivering for our customers while building a next-generation platform with enhanced capabilities,” Paul concludes.