Graeme Watkins, CEO at Valutrades, Speaks on the Importance of Brokerage Regulations

Fazzaco is honored to have the CEO at Valutrades, a multi-regulated and UK-based brokerage, to join us today. As a veteran in the industry, Mr. Graeme Watkins is here to share his opinions on regulations and Valutrades' 2022 ambitions.

​Fazzaco: Thanks for joining Fazzaco! Could you tell us more about yourself and Valutrades?

Graeme: Hi everyone, my name is Graeme Watkins. I have almost 20 years of experience originally starting at broker London Capital Group and then financial technology company oneZero Financial Systems. I joined Valutrades founding shareholder Anil Bahirwani's group of companies in 2014 and in 2015 took over as full time CEO of Valutrades. I have always had a background in operations and technology and have used this to focus Valutrades attention to creating the most robust and reliable systems possible to ensure a smooth service to all clients.

Valutrades was established in 2012 as a UK FCA regulated FX, Commodities and CFD broker and Valutrades Seychelles was later established in 2018 to facilitate growing global demand. When Valutrades was established the founders had a clear principle leant from Warren Buffett "Price is what you pay but Value is what you get" and Valutrades was formed to provide clients with a high value service including the tightest spreads possible, extreme safety of funds and the highest levels of customer service. The focus of Valutrades to this day has always been on providing value to the customer above profits and this has left Valutrades in the enviable position of achieving year of year growth since inception as well as offering our clients amazing value like average gold spreads of just 7 cents.

Fazzaco: How was 2021 for Valutrades?

Graeme: 2021 was a great year for Valutrades which saw the continued growth of the business and record annual volumes. We continued to reinvest profits back into the business and saw exciting product launches like our new signal service in partnership with Signal Center.

Fazzaco: How important is regulation to Valutrades?

Graeme: Without regulation there would not be a successful business for Valutrades. Central to our company vision is providing clients access to the most secure and highly regulated service. Thanks to our UK FCA regulation clients are able to be assured their funds are secure following FCA client money rules on segregation of funds, funds are held in tier one UK banks only and all investors are protected by the UK FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme). Even when we offer services through our Valutrades Seychelles entity we are fully regulated by the FSA in Seychelles and we operate our Seychelles entity to the same high standards we operate our UK business.

Fazzaco: Why is funding so important to Valutrades?

Graeme: In the digital age clients expect everything to be completed instantly and when it's not in the brokerage business it will lead to concerns from clients about scam businesses. To avoid such problems Valutrades has invested considerable time and money in developing a global network of more than 20 payment providers and 75 payment methods. This ensures clients can deposit and withdraw funds seamlessly anywhere around the world.

Fazzaco: What is in store for Valutrades in 2022?

Graeme: Just now on 7th February Valutrades celebrated it's 10th anniversary proving that our commitment to great value and customer service over profits can still create a sustainable business model. In 2022 our primary focus is now on aggressive pricing of the most popular trading instruments. We are currently showing a 6-8 cent gold spread and believe that our pricing in gold and major FX pairs such as EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDJPY is the best in the industry.

Fazzaco: What do you see as the technological innovations in 2022?

Graeme: Valutrades is focused on two key aspects of technology performance and market access. We have for many years been investing in high performance technology to ensure our pricing and trade execution operates at 100% reliability and sub millisecond speeds. We are also seeing an increased need to focus on market access whether this is deploying CDN (content distribution networks) for faster application loading, developing new mobile applications for seamless user experience or introducing new products like equities and crypto currencies.