Armenia Securities Exchange and ARQA Technologies implement a new trading infrastructure of Armenian financial market

Armenia Securities Exchange (AMX) and ARQA Technologies announce implementation of QUIK software as a key part of the exchange new technological platform, which is the main trading venue of the organized Armenian financial market. There was a long preparatory stage before this large-scale project implementation, which included a detailed analysis of the exchange requirements. It resulted in a number of improvements of the QUIK system aimed to adopt it to the features and needs of the Armenian financial market.

At the current stage, QUIK software serves as AMX matching engine, provides services for receiving and processing clients instructions, distributing market data, preparing reports for trading participants as well as organizing online pre-trade risk management of trading operations.

An additional benefit of QUIK software implementation on AMX is the opportunity for trading participants to use end-user terminals that are available in desktop, web, and mobile versions. Moreover, the platform allows connection of external trading systems via the FIX protocol.

The integrated infrastructure is based on IT solution offered by a vendor with 20 years' experience in building high-load systems for financial markets and operation with the largest exchanges in the world. The applied solution is modular and asset class neutral which makes it possible to further expand the exchange infrastructure taking into account emerging requirements of the local financial market.

The new technological platform is currently used for primary placements on the Armenian public debt market. The first auctions on government bonds of the Armenian government were successfully held on January 20, 2020. The nearest plans of AMX and ARQA Technologies include set up of a secondary bond market trading, adding other asset classes as well as further development of exchange services for trading participants.

Vladimir Kurlyandchik, Head of Business Development at ARQA Technologies:

"We are proud of QUIK product implementation as the core technology of Armenia Securities Exchange. The successful completion of this challenging project required months’ of collaboration of the project teams on business analysis, testing and solution development. I would like to point out high professionalism and full involvement of AMX employees that resulted in implementation of this complex project in record time..."

Hayk Yeganyan, CEO at Armenia Securities Exchange:

"This is an important time for us as we have made a revolutionary decision to replace entirely the legacy trading software, which was installed in 2001. We have explored the market of such software providers since 2018, and I should say that QUIK is one of the solutions which has ticked all the boxes as per our requirements, in addition to having a team of experts dedicated to our project for development and enhancements. Securing the company with a scalable and robust new trading platform was imperative. We have achieved this with the expert knowledge of ARQA Technologies. The support we have received so far is outstanding – meaning we were able to migrate the Gbond auctions module to the new solution and operate business as usual in a very short time frame. The replacement of the legacy system will be gradual, and we have started with the government bond auctions module, which was successfully launched in early January. Currently we are working on replacing the secondary market and hopefully we will complete the migration to QUIK software as seamlessly as possible by mid-2020. With the new software we aim to provide sponsored direct market access to AMX for retail investors through our brokers."