Robert Pickel, the former chief executive of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, is joining the board of the U.S. swap execution facility operated by Tradition.

The inter-dealer broker has appointed Pickel as a non-executive director of TraditionSEF.

Pickel has experience in the over-the-counter market as last year he stepped down as chief executive of trade organisation Isda.

Tradition said in a statement: “Recently, he led the OTC derivatives industry through a period of significant reform, helping to coordinate the industry’s response to a variety of regulatory reforms, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the European Market Infrastructure Regulation and Basel III, among others.”

Pickel added: “Swap execution facilities are playing an increasingly important role in derivatives trading and the market landscape and this is only set to continue over the coming years. Tradition is a major SEF operator in the US, and its strong history and experience in the derivatives industry put its SEF in an excellent position to capitalize on the many opportunities that lie ahead for it and for its customers.”

Pickel will speak at Markets Media’s fourth-annual Fixed Income Trading and Investing Summit, which will be held in New York on May 5. He will discuss the evolution of fixed-income market structure and challenges and opportunities for market participants and market operators, in a ‘fireside’ keynote conversation with Kevin Arnold, Head of Foreign Exchange, Rates and Credit, Americas at UBS.

Tradition is part of Compagnie Financière Tradition, which is listed on the Swiss stock exchange, and last month the group reported its 2014 results.

The results statement said: “Since the introduction of SEFs in October 2013 into the US marketplace as a component part of the Dodd Frank Act, Trad-X has formed the backbone of Tradition SEF’s Interest Rate Swap. Total USD IRS trading volumes since launch in February 2013 exceeded CHF 1 trillion (single count).”

The group said it continued its investments in technology last year to develop hybrid trading platforms covering multi-asset classes and extend Tradition’s voice broking services.

“These substantial investments have a negative impact on the Group’s short-term profitability but are critical in order to fully benefit from opportunities driven by the regulatory developments. Tradition’s industry award-winning platforms, Trad-X and ParFX, are at the core of its electronic strategy,” said the group.

In 2014 Compagnie Financière Tradition posted consolidated revenue of CHF 837.5m ($858m), a decrease of 3.5% from 2013, which it said was better than that of the interdealer sector. However operating profit for the year increased by 31.1% to CHF 41.2m.