ARQA Technologies in 2018

Clients

In 2018, 20 organizations including banks, investment companies, asset management companies, and exchanges became new clients of the company. Besides that, 4 clients expanded their current infrastructure by implementing both software product lines – QUIK and QORT – by ARQA Technologies.

Projects

A defining feature of the year was implementation by ARQA Technologies of many various projects to develop the QUIK software complex and the QORT platform as well. These projects were focused on bringing the company solutions into a line with infrastructure and regulatory changes on financial markets as well as on development of complex trading solutions and training services.

Support of regulatory requirements

• Early in the year ARQA Technologies completed development of QUIK products providing trading access on international markets to facilitate compliance by market participants with EU MiFID II requirements that came into force in January 2018.
  Developments were made in the following software: QUIK Server, QUIK Workstation, OMS Manager Module, Bloomberg B-PIPE Market Data Interface, Market Data Interface of TREP RT system (Thomson Reuters), SunGard Global Network Market Data Interface, Nanex Market Data Interface, FIX program interfaces
• A number of changes supporting regulations of the European Central Bank were made in QORT products for use by international clients of the company.
  
• The automated back-office backQORT acquired an option to generate XBRL report forms for non-credit financial organizations in csv files in accordance with Directive of Bank of Russia # 4621-U of 27 November 2017
  

Support of infrastructure innovations

• ARQA Technologies supported infrastructure changes made by Moscow Exchange for division of the FX Market trading system into trading and clearing systems. In this connection, the line of server modules was supplemented with a new solution – Moscow Exchange Clearing System of the FX Market Program Interface, where the following information about trading participants was transferred: positions, risks, liabilities and claims for cash.
  
  Moreover, a new Moscow Exchange trading mode was added to Moscow Exchange FX Market trading interface for execution of OTC trades with liquidity providers and NCC as a central counterparty.
• Following the launch of Indicative Quote System (IQS) on MOEX Derivatives Market, the company developed the Program interface of Indicative Quote System of MOEX Derivatives Market. The interface provides IQS access and allows traders and their clients to submit orders for low liquidity derivatives, which appear as indicative quotes without prior check for available cash.
  
• The Saint-Petersburg Exchange trading interface (Foreign securities market) supported innovations made by the exchange: OTC trading and operations of currency conversion.
  
• National Settlement Depository (NSD) and ARQA Technologies successfully integrated NSD’s centralized system for record keeping of mutual fund units with QUIK software. The developed Program interface of Centralized system for record keeping and distributing Unit Investment Trust units (NSD) allows investors to execute operations to buy, sell and exchange investment units via QUIK terminals.
  

  As part of the project, general development of QUIK was made for execution of operations with instruments of the ‘Investment units’ type. Some changes were made in a number of products of the company to support operations with fractional numbers of instruments.
  Developments were made in the following software:  QUIK Server, QUIK Workstation, Market Data Export Module, FIX program interfaces, QUIK Matching Engine

• To extend capabilities of trading in currencies (incl. cryptocurrency), improvements in the QUIK Software Package were made that allow operating with fractional cash values that exceed two digits after the decimal point.
  Developments were made in the following software: QUIK Server, QUIK Workstation, Market Data Export Module, Cross currency rates forming module, QUIK Matching Engine
• The process was continued for conversion of the QUIK server to 64-bit architecture. In particular, the server transformation was finished with increased scalability of the system.
  

Setting up complex trading solutions

• Developing solutions for complex trading software packages, ARQA Technologies supplemented ARQA OMS with new capabilities including: direct interaction between Clients and Traders without participation of Sales, group execution of OMS-orders with coinciding parameters, use of house-orders to execute broker’s own operations, limiting of OMS-orders, and many ergonomic changes of the interface.
  

  It is also worth noting that ARQA Technologies continued adapting the OMS-solution for European markets. Due to improved market data processing and data-centers services, ARQA OMS has wider applicability on European financial markets.

Training services

• The training server of ARQA Technologies, providing free demo access to training systems of Moscow Exchange, acquired the capacity of working with algo orders. This innovation enabled users to test their own strategies with such algorithms as ‘Volatility’, ‘Order with a period of validity’, ‘Stop Order’, ‘Spread’ and other algorithms available in the Algorithmic trading module.
  
• ARQA Technologies together with MOEX School held a series of monthly webinars ‘QUIK from developer’ where ARQA Technologies specialists told about the main terminal functionality of the QUIK Workstation and mobile terminals from first installation and setting steps to complex stop- and algorithmic orders and internal programming languages.

Development of user terminals

In 2018, the principal QUIK user terminal — the QUIK Workstation — went through four updates with new ergonomic alterations as a trend of recent years. For example, changes were made to optimize table settings and error reports, add more flexible functionality for graphic analysis, and transmit news in html format.

Besides that, last year the company released new versions of mobile terminals QUIK Android X and iQUIK X which underwent general redesign and supported full compatibility with tablet PCs. There are new options of authorization – TouchID (with a fingerprint scan) and FaceID (with a 3D face scan), improved ergonomics for displaying graphs, changes in notification and order services, processing of several classes of non-trade instructions.

In 2018, ARQA Technologies offered its service for branding QUIK mobile terminals that provides clients with a separate application in custom-designed color schemes available in Google Play and App Store.

   The company also took part in several big projects to develop investment applications for major players of the Russian financial market.

Events

In 2018, ARQA Technologies took an active part in leading technological forums in Russia and abroad, exhibitions and conferences, such as IDX 2018 (London), TradeTech Europe 2018 (Paris), TradeTech FX (Barcelona), 14th Annual FIA Asia Derivatives Conference (Singapore), Moscow Exchange Forum (Moscow), InvestTech of Moscow Exchange (Moscow), Finnopolis (Sochi), NAUFOR Russian Stock Market Conference (Ekaterinburg), Siberian forum of exchange and financial markets of Moscow Exchange (Novosibirsk), etc.

The company’s own annual ‘February’ seminar traditionally attracted a large audience. In 2018 its attendance closed on 360 representatives from over 100 Russian and foreign companies.

For the second consecutive year ARQA Technologies conducted joint workshops with Bloomberg and QuantHouse in Moscow.

ARQA Technologies together with the Belarusian currency and stock exchange held its first seminar in Minsk where professional financial market participants of the Republic of Belarus were introduced to capabilities of the QUIK software complex.

In 2018, ARQA Technologies acted for the fourth time as a technological partner of the competition held by Moscow Exchange for newcomers to exchange trading ‘Invest Trial’ with its own nomination ‘A Random Walk Down Bolshoy Kislovskiy’. A special prize, Apple Watch Sport, was raffled off during the prizegiving ceremony.