Exclusive Interview with Head of GBE Prime, Ben Henke: the Key to Be a Successful Online Broker

Nowadays, ways of trading have changed dramatically as the global Covid-19 pandemic has greatly affected people's daily life. With the increasing adoption of digital financial services, online trading platforms become an indispensable investment channel for traders.

Client experience has always been a great concern for enterprises, and in the digital era, the digital experience of users turns out to be a key factor in the success of financial institutions that provide online trading services.

Ben Henke has been with GBE brokers, a fully licensed and regulated CFD broker, as its head of GBE Prime, the institutional brand of the broker, for 10 years. As a senior leader with more than 15 years of experience in the Forex field, Ben shared the core elements of GBE brokers' success as a high-quality online trading platform and his views on the future development of the industry. 

Fazzaco: Hi Ben. Pleasure to meet you, and thanks for joining us today at Fazzaco. Could you tell us a bit more about GBE brokers?

Ben: Our core is defined by our people who love to help the trading community. It is GBE brokers mission to create a substantial lasting impact.

We are incredibly lucky to have a privileged position to help traders who trust us, to help other brokers to grow their business operations, who offer similar products and services like GBE brokers, but still trust us to help them establish their trading technology through our institutional brand called GBE Prime.

We are a diverse team of skilful people in our specialty, with different perspectives. Altogether we are focused to unlock creativity, innovation, and with our capabilities we expand on a global scale.

GBE brokers act as an accelerator to help traders to achieve their financial goals, their vision by giving them the best support possible. For us, every single trader is a spark, and we are here to help them, not only with the small stuff, but also with the big stuff. We are here to shape an engine that can turn some aspiration into reality.

We listen, remain empathetic, get to the core of what is driving the problem for the trader and through dialogue, we adjust things, so the trading journey has longevity, not just single events. 

We are here for the long run, and we are going to stay alongside with the trading community.

Fazzaco: What is GBE brokers vision? Which elements define you? Who are your clients?

Ben: We take pride in driving change in the finance world. Our values are transparency, trust, and reliability. We want traders to have access to a better trading environment, to deliver something that is meaningful to them. GBE brokers view is aligned and follows our trader requirements, next we scale accordingly. 

We retain sufficient capacity to serve robust trading conditions, encourage internal product and service innovation, which can enhance investment growth. Most importantly, we focus on what matters the most, to always deliver personalized customer support.

For the institutional side, we have established a stable business model to deliver an advanced liquidity distribution solution to our partners and remain disciplined to our values. 

Fazzaco: Congrats on your new Dubai Office! What is GBE's global presence?

Ben: Our latest office establishment is the representative office located at Business Bay area in Dubai, where all our partners and investors are welcome to visit. 

(Dubai office of GBE brokers)

(Mahmoud H.Mohamad, Branch Manager MENA at GBE brokers)

GBE brokers have 3 offices, located at the heart of major global financial centres of the world, our head office in Cyprus, branch office Germany and representative office in UAE. It is our unique global footprint to best support the European, African, Asian and Middle East markets.

(Dubai office of GBE brokers)

Fazzaco: Do you have any plans for regions like Asia Pacific?

Ben: Our plans are mainly focused on solidifying our brand into the German speaking markets we are already well known. The direction is to penetrate each market, select the best suited strategy and react with vertical commercial activities.

Following this direction, and constantly sharpening our customer support process to deliver a smooth online trading experience on the retail and institutional side, it has resulted in organically attracting more business and growing our market share globally.

Fazzaco: Describe GBE brokers culture profile. Why should retail traders trade online with GBE brokers?

Ben: GBE brokers culture is agile, modern, and flexible when it comes to delivering an absolute online trading experience to our trader community. When opportunities arise, we concentrate on every step and react accordingly.

Our inspiration for the future is defined by identifying the global market trends, listening to our traders needs, and remaining true in offering an unprecedented focus on customer support. It sounds simple, in theory, but we truly deliver the action.

GBE brokers act in accordance with the highest professional standards and utmost integrity and holds appropriate measures to embrace funds safety and security with a EUR 100,000 professional funds indemnity insurance covered by Lloyd's for each retail client.

On the technology side, we do have a cohesive end-to-end infrastructure, where we centrally manage and deploy deep and aggregated market pricing, following our fairness and reliability principles. The internal systems used are fully compliant meeting any financial, legal, and regulatory requirements by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).

Those are fundamental elements, when selecting a regulated online broker to trade online.

Fazzaco: What was the impact of the Covid on GBE brokers? What are your thoughts on the future and where the industry will head to?

Ben: The world in which we live in, the pace of changes is unprecedented. Time matters.

Organizations need to adapt to that speed of change, and the way in which decisions are made, have a significant impact on how they will play in the new arena, which will define whether they will be successful.

GBE brokers corporate structure enables growth in the capital markets for the long-term horizon, having a forward-looking understanding of our trader community unfolding aspirations. 

It is a digital business, so we stretch beyond business operations seeking to monetize our existing trading platforms, the MT4 and MT5 aiming to deliver a superior and personal approach anywhere, anytime.

Looking ahead, people may start growing comfortable living alongside with Covid-19. Growth is necessary to continue for organizations and economies to survive. It will be challenging but it is possible. It will require innovation, policy effectiveness, leadership, and collaboration to accelerate a sustainable and inclusive growth. 

The key to success for financial institutions offering online trading as a service, is to provide a better end user digital experience, high quality deep liquidity and a wide range of products offering.