Liquidity Finder

SAM LOW

CEO/Founder of Liquidity Finder

LiquidityFinder is a comprehensive online platform and professional network dedicated to helping institutional traders and brokers discover, compare, and select liquidity providers in the global financial markets. Through its intuitive search functionality and detailed provider profiles, the platform empowers users to make informed decisions while streamlining the process of connecting with suitable liquidity partners and other industry professionals.

Q Liquidity Finder has been established for several years now, what inspired you to make it?

In my previous work at Integral and First Derivatives, I looked after banks, brokers and asset managers trading FX. MY main clients were banks, institutional brokers, as well as large retail brokers. The retail FX industry really started taking off from about 2008, and, as there was a big appetite amongst market making banks to receive the flow from retail brokers, the Prime Brokerage market became extremely competitive with very low barriers to entry and relatively cheap clearing fees.

All that changed after certain market events, most notably, the removal of the peg by the SNB. After that shock to the system, PBs started withdrawing from the market en masse. Their place was filled with what we now call Prime of Prime (PoP) brokers. Tier-1 PBs were offboarding direct clients and handing them to their PoP clients. The number of PoPs, started multiplying.

During that process, there were a lot of retail brokers, smaller banks and funds running around trying to find new Liquidity Providers for their business. I had the idea that someone needed to make it easier to find which brokers (PoPs) were offering what products out of which datacentres, using certain tech providers etc. If I didn’t do it, someone else would!

So I asked a few of my institutional broker contacts whether they would be interested in joining a comparison site/directory of institutional liquidity to help new clients to find them. They all said yes, so that is how it started. I had always wanted to set up my own project and so, knowing that there was interest from brokers to support the idea, I decided to create LiquidityFinder to help the market make sense of what had hitherto been an opaque market. If brokers could get more customers, and customers could find brokers ready to work with them without all the legwork they were having to put in before, it seemed like a good idea!

Q One thing that always intrigues me with people who make projects like this, is Liquidity Finder today the same as what was on your blueprint? Or has it evolved differently?

When you start out on a journey like this, you can only really see what is in front of you. Over time you understand that things have to evolve. Originally the site was simply going to be a comparison site where visitors could look at details of the companies listed, and all the associated news and info around them, do matching searches and contact brokers.

However, keeping track of all the changes that brokers make to their services in this highly competitive industry is challenging. If companies on the site could have control over their own presence on the site, updating the instruments they offer, their news and posts etc, then this would help them be more efficient with their messaging. That idea morphed into the idea of turning the site into a professional network for the industry, which is what LiquidityFinder is today. Companies on LiquidityFinder can publish their own content, update their profiles, and use the site’s messaging network to receive and send messages to potential clients.

I had always wanted to create an environment where people could crowd-source information from each other, and to create an alternative professional networking site. I hear a lot of people complaining about LinkedIn turning into Facebook and being spammed by SEO wizards etc through cold emails etc. So towards the end of 2021 we worked on a lot of new features for the site that would create a new professional networking site for the finance industry without all the “noise” there is on other sites like Linkedn.

We relaunched a new version of the site in December 2022, and LiquidityFinder now has most of the features of a professional networking site. Still a few things to do but to answer the question, LiquidityFinder now has evolved into a very different site than when it first started.

Q Was it hard leaving the safety of paid employment to make your own brand?

I was fortunate in that personal circumstances helped me to make the decision. We decided to move out of London back to Devon, where my wife and I are both from. We wanted our children to grow up in the country. So the burden of a monthly mortgage had disappeared, which made the decision much easier to make. However, I do now appreciate the safety of paid employment and what that means. But it is outweighed by the freedom of being responsible for and in control of your own destiny.

Q There is a huge amount of news providers in the FX industry. How do you gather all of the news out there?

Well, like all industry news sites, we all subscribe to similar Press Release newswires and receive press releases from agencies. So that is one way. The other way is to identify industry themes and write about them. However, and this was another driver for the creation of the new version of LiquidityFinder, we are very open to any news site publishing their content on our site, for free. Any news or research company can create an organisation page on our site for free and post their content to our audience. Even other industry news sites. What we are working to create is an environment where people can view updates from the industry from any source to add more value to the users of the site.

The traditional finance world is busy enough with change that it can be hard to keep up. Add to that all the developments in DeFi and it is almost impossible! This is why we are happy to let our audience post their own news on our site to give our audience as much chance as possible of being up to date with what is happening in these ultra-dynamic markets. LiquidityFinder’s mission is to bring transparency to the industry as much as possible.

Q As an outsider choosing an LP, what separates one from another?

That is a very interesting question and kind of gets to the heart of the matter. It appears that a lot of the LPs listed on LiquidityFinder are offering the same instruments. However, there is a lot of detail that many don’t consider. For example, where are the LPs servers located (ie: are they close to where my clients are, to reduce latency?) What is the smallest ticket size, or largest ticket size an LP can handle? How do they manage market data fees? When we onboard a company on to LiquidityFinder we ask the company to complete over 100 fields of information. The combination of features together separates some LPs from others. We make this easy for our users with our Matching tools.

A visitor can simply go through a series of questions and the system filters out the LPs that can match their requirements. From the shortlist of companies that are then presented they can decide to send a message to all, or some of them. I do hear that some retail brokers looking for an LP, avoid certain names because of “things they have heard”, without elaborating but I take this t mean that some personalities may clash. At the end of the day there needs to be some personality chemistry as the relationship should be a long-term mutually beneficial one.

Personality types could be the last, but not the least, important thing that can decide whether a broker works with an LP or not. We all know that sometimes things can go ‘wrong’ and it is how people react in these circumstances that can be a deciding factor in the relationship working or not.

Q Is LiquidityFInder designed specifically for a person who has a sophisticated understanding of how the FX industry works?

LiquidityFinder doesn’t cater to just the FX industry. Most of the companies on the site are multi-asset class. However, mostly the audience consists of professionals in the industry, whether that is FX, Futures, Crypto, Fixed Income. We do definitely have visits from retail traders, and they are most welcome. But yes the site is designed to cater to industry professionals.

Q From the data of the search results, do people just look at low low spreads, or is there more to it when they select an LP?

Every broker needs to be competitive on spreads and commissions. We do see people coming to LiquidityFinder when they are thinking of changing LPs because they think they can get a more competitive arrangement. Recently we helped one particular broker reduce his fees by over 40%, so definitely worth him re-evaluating his LPs.

Of course the LP has to have all the instruments the broker needs to keep his clients happy. That is a given.

It might be worth mentioning that we do provide reports to the LPs on the site with a summary of the search criteria that visitors have been looking for over each quarter to help LPs understand what the trends are in the market. These are aggregated reports and do not mention any names. It is a summary of what instruments and other criteria are in demand.

Q How challenging was it to onboard the first LP brands to your site?

It was not challenging initially as the first companies came on the site for free. It was a free option for them.

Q What are the benefits of listing on your site?

Ultimately brand-awareness and new business leads.

LiquidityFinder is the only site I know of that caters to the institutional side of the market, to the depth that we do, and now has a good reputation for doing so. So joining LiquidityFinder allows a company to be seen and considered by our audience. Visitors that search for key search terms end up on LiquidityFinder and are presented with a good list of potential business partners. That list is now quite long and I am sure that there are some names on the site that are new names to many. So any LP in this space can be included and considered in any research that a broker or asset manager may be undertaking for a new Liquidity Provider, and not get forgotten about.

The visitors to our site who use our matching and other research t0ols are far down the sales funnel in terms of looking for Liquidity Providers. If an LP is on our site, they get included in that search.

Companies, LPs and non-LPs, can use the content management tools on our site to be in control of their own branding and content to our focused audience. We even allow them to create company focused forums which we expect to get more active over the coming months. This allows a company to grow a community around their brand and liaise direct with their clients and potential clients.

Q How are you looking to evolve the site in the future?

We will soon be making the user directory much more user-friendly. We want to improve the search tools for finding other members on the site to allow then to connect and message each other more easily. As the membership grows this is getting more important to do.

We will be adding more data and analysis tools over the next few months.

We also have a growing list of non-Liquidity Provider companies joining the site. These are companies such as trading platform providers, payment services providers etc.

More coverage of the crypto space. More tools for analysis and news, which includes more market data and toolkits for analysis and research.

We expect to add more industry news providers also in the near future.

Q Will you be looking to add more Crypto exchanges to your listings mirroring FX?

Yes – this is the plan! We would very much encourage Crypto exchanges to get in contact. There is a lot of appetite out there.

Q What tips can you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Every entrepreneur needs to make sure they have Product Market Fit firmly established before venturing out on your own. Speak to potential customers first and build a product that works to cater to their needs. Then keep iterating as you go and adapt to customer feedback.

Also, crucially - make sure your family are on board with your idea. Your time will be taken up by your project perhaps more than you ever imagined so some sacrifices will have to be made.

Also, it can be a lonely existence if setting out on your own. Only other Founders will really appreciate what that means. So I would recommend finding a mentor –someone who you can turn to for advice when complex issues present themselves. Someone who can sometimes see things a bit more clearly than you are able to because you are stuck in the weeds.