Surveillance firm Eventus signs first Australian client

Eventus Systems has signed its first Australian client as the US surveillance firm steps up plans to expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Sydney-based Morrison Securities, the top broker by volume and value in the Australian Securities Exchange’s (ASX) equity derivatives market and a provider of execution and clearing services to Australia Financial Services Licence holders, has chosen the cloud-based version of Eventus’s Validus platform for trade surveillance in equities, equity options and warrants.

Morrison will go live on Validus in July for trade surveillance of its activity on the ASX, Chi-X Australia and the National Stock Exchange of Australia.

Eric Einfalt, chief strategy officer at Eventus, said Validus is now actively surveilling activity on more than 100 exchanges globally across asset classes.

"Based on client interest we’re planning to add new markets throughout APAC, including China," he told Global Investor.

"We’ve only just begun to make our presence known in APAC, and our sales team has found firms that have been using legacy platforms to be extremely receptive to learning more about the versatility, advanced technology and scalability of Validus, and how it differs from anything else on the market.

"We've introduced hundreds of new features and enhancements to the platform over the past year, including many devoted specifically to insider trading procedures, and we now cover 18 markets in APAC for insider trading specifically."

Einfalt also highlighted growing interest in the platform from crypto exchanges, including several in Asia. "As firms storied in traditional asset classes grapple with how to pivot into digital assets, with a big footprint in both of these arenas we are uniquely positioned to provide a single solution to help firms make this transition," he said.

The US firm's APAC expansion is being led from Hong Kong by Vince Turcotte, who is sales director, Asia Pacific. The team includes regional sales manager David Mitchell, who is a native of Australia and has more than 25 years of global markets experience in Sydney and Chicago.

Morrison’s managing director William Slack said in a statement on Thursday that the Validus platform, which uses machine learning and robotic process automation to detect relevant market behaviour, will enable the broker to scale its trade surveillance capabilities as it expands onto new exchanges.

“We believe the functionality of Validus, particularly the artificial intelligence overlay when it comes to alerts, will allow us to be more efficient and precise with how we manage the alerts that come through,” he said.

“Under our current platform, our compliance staff has so much data to sift through each day that it is extremely time consuming to determine which alerts are valid and worth pursuing. By introducing machine learning over time in the system, we’ll cut out the noise and reduce the scope of those alerts significantly.”

In its statement, Eventus's chief executive Travis Schwab said the US firm anticipates further, near-term growth in the region.

“We’ve continued to make strong inroads into APAC and expect that we’ll see significant growth in Australia and other parts of the region in the coming year,” he said. 

Eventus last June outlined plans to multiply its European client base to up to 30 over 12 months after it signed the London-based European subsidiary of Fortune 500 broker INTL FCStone. In November, the US firm added exchange-traded derivatives clearing firm G.H. Financials.