Results of 2008

For ARQA Technologies the year 2008 was rich in developments and changes.

One of the main changes was a new name of the company. With this change we decided to mark the new stage of the company development and tried to overcome association only with QUIK system. The company has already offered to its clients not only QUIK but also solutions on the base of QORT program platform as well as a range of dealing systems and solutions integrated into the brokers websites. Technical centers of the company providing outsourcing, hosting and back-up services work very intensively. In the future ARQA Technologies will develop a spectrum of products and services to help banks and investment companies in complex automation of their activity in financial markets, and therefore in considerable rise of their effectiveness. In achievement of this goal, ARQA Technologies tries to keep and add new quality to the tradition of the ‘client bias’ and to the wish to suggest to each client an optimal set of products and services, in spite of the client base rise and a product line broadening.

In 2008 the company’s client base grew appreciably. During the year 37 banks and investment companies became our new clients using QUIK, 29 of them have installed the complex on their own technical facilities and 8 use outsourcing on the facilities of ARQA Technologies Moscow Technical Center. 4 companies have bought and applied the solutions on the base of QORT platform.

In 2008 the company was paying considerable attention to the development of its Moscow Technical Center. At the end of the year the Center has served 35 banks and investment companies; the amount of end users served daily exceeded 11 000 people.

QUIK development

Following the changes and innovations in the MICEX and RTS trading systems, in 2008 a possibility for banks to participate in the credit auctions of the Bank of Russia and for the broker’s clients to trade at the RTS ‘classical market’ was implemented. The access to trading by futures at the National Commodity Exchange was granted to the users. Trading interfaces to the Ukrainian Exchanges — Ukrainian Exchange (order-driven market) and the Ukrainian Exchange — were offered to the market participants. In the framework of the project with GL two new trading systems were attached — XETRA and EDX.

Banks and investment companies using QUIK were offered new Q2Q Service. It permits to organize the access to the exchange trading systems for traders and clients of one company through the QUIK server of another company. This service together with other options of QUIK allows setting the multilevel access systems to a wide spectrum of instruments and trading regimes.

On the whole, the company has produced 4 new versions of the QUIK Workstation software. Major changes (v.5.10–5.11) were intended for the active users, for whom visibility of information and prompt reaction to the changing market situation are utterly important. The possibility to import orders via a special program interface (API) has been realized as well as means for sending orders from the ‘level II quotes’ window. In-built graphs reflect now the levels of active orders, stop-orders and trades of a user. The functionality of in-built language QPILE was extended. As an example, now a debugging window can be called up. Analytical functionality of the system for the option market has been broadened essentially.

As always great attention was paid to optimization of the server software.

QORT platform development

Another product — QORT program platform — is also actively developing. In 2007 on the base of this platform software of a broker middle office — midQORT — was worked out and brought out to the market. In 2008 another product was built up and presented to the market – a broker back office backQORT. Thus, the company has finished a creation of ‘front-to-back solution’ for automation of the brokerage business.

At the end of 2008 the solutions based on QORT platform have been implemented in 10 investment companies and banks.

Customized projects of the company

• Joint project with Master Bank aimed for the integration of QUIK with ATM software was fulfilled. Now QUIK users can send trade orders to buy or sell securities with the help of a special ‘broker card’ of Master Bank using ATM terminals.
• QUIK-IN-SITE project has been completed – it supposed the integration of QUIK trading functionality into a broker website. Owing to this opportunity, the broker’s clients can receive and monitor market-data from the exchange trading systems, send orders and trade via the website of the broker. Now the process of application of this solution is taken place at one of the company’s client.

Seminars for clients

On the base of its Moscow office ARQA Technologies continues to carry out the courseware for clients on ‘QUIK administration’ and ‘Calculation of the clients’ positions in the QUIK system’. During the year the company’s specialists conducted 8 series of the seminars. 126 specialists from 92 banks and investment companies took part in them. The company keeps unchanged a format of the seminars - small groups of 6-7 people with a possibility of round-table discussions.

Participation in exhibitions and conferences

Besides traditional:

• exhibitions devoted to the latest progress in developing of exchange and financial software, organized on the MICEX premises;
• series of events for the participants of the futures and options markets, organized by FORTS;
• forums for the stock market participants, which were carried out in Ukraine and Kazakhstan,

ARQA Technologies for the first time took part as an exhibitor in the international top-level exhibitions and conferences of software developers and users of automation systems for financial institutions, which were organized in Paris and Moscow (TradeTech exhibition series).