Alternative-investment asset manager Crow Point Partners has taken their trading platform mobile, according to firm officials.

The Hingham, Mass.-based hedge fund replaced its Eze Software Investment Suite with LiquidityBooks SaaS-based LBX Buy-Side Trader portfolio-, order-, and execution management system for its global equities, options, futures, fixed-income and foreign-exchange trading.

 

“It makes the platform much simpler and less expensive to manage while providing the mobile access we were lacking,” said Peter DeCaprio, principal and portfolio manager at Crow Point Partners, in a statement.

Crow Point Partners is an example of the growing trend in adopting mobile access across the buy and sell side, according to Brad Bailey, research director, securities and investment at industry analysis firm Celent.

“You have to remember that institutional-trading technology is lightyears behind what retail investing technology has regarding visualization and analytics,” he said.

Bailey also noted that “mobile access’ goes beyond Android- and iOS-powered cell phones. “it also means tablets or anything else with slide functionality.”

The trickiest issue for larger organizations in adopting mobile access for their institutional traders is a matter of authenticating the trader on the other end of the remote connection.

“In geographies where you have to record mobile, that is an important thing,” he said. “How do you know the person placing the trade is authenticated properly and is the institutional trader?”

However, as mobile connections become even more ubiquitous in everyday life, demand will only rise on the institutional trading desk.

“To the degree that their firms allow mobile access from a regulatory and a senior-management perspective, they’re going to want it,” said Bailey.

It took Crow Point Partners 10 weeks to be up and running on the new platform with its 25 brokers globally, Sean Sullivan, chief revenue officer at LiquidityBook, told Markets Media.

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