Person of the Year: Andrew Wood, APAC Institutional Sales Director at CMC Markets Connect

Working Like a Spy

Andrew's office is located in Sydney, where CMC Australia is headquartered. About 1,200 kilometers away lies the city of Adelaide in southern Australia, home to Flinders University, Andrew's alma mater. In 2003, he graduated from Flinders as a Bachelor of Commerce, Accounting and Finance.

As a matter of fact, Andrew has had banking experience before his graduation - during his internship in a bank where he was engaged in forex and money market trading business.

He went to the famous Deutsche Bank upon graduation, marking his official entry into the forex business. The time he spent at the bank proved to be greatly conducive to his career, and he has had exposure to institutional business. That prepared him well for his next step.

With more institutional experience, Andrew was officially appointed by CMC as the APAC Institutional Sales Director in 2017, playing the role that deals with the demands of APIs, IBs, liquidity and white labeling from clients of the region.

The London-headquartered online trader has always been known for its retail business for a long time. People had little knowledge of their institutional services. In an interview, Andrew was asked a relevant question - what to expect from a company's institutional business since it is mainly known for its retail services? "CMC Markets already has a very strong reputation as a retail service provider. What our institutional business does is leverage those strengths, and then take them further. Our combination of strong institutional relationships with tier one banks, high levels of working capital and a strong internal liquidity pool means we can provide a true value-add service to other banks and brokers," answered Andrew, "having a large retail book alongside access to other pricing sources allows us to create our own liquidity. In this respect, CMC Markets is now seen as a liquidity maker, setting us apart from others." 

In a 3-min quick Q&A by CMC Markets, Andrew Wood mentioned that he was recently watching a French drama called Le Bureau des Légendes. He said that he couldn't help but watch the next episode whenever he finishes one. In the drama, some spies are making contacts with the entire world with their communication device in an office that looks perfectly normal.

Now, that seems kind of similar to CMC Markets, a company with global footprint. For the institutional business department, they have to stay in touch with clients from every corner of the world. In fact, one of the key strengths of CMC is the bulk of such interactions with their APAC clients.

So I guess that is probably the reason why Andrew likes the drama so much. After all, who could turn down a cool job that makes you work like a spy just what like you see on TV?