Delta Index to expand overseas

FINANCIAL SPREAD betting firm Delta Index is investing €3 million in its online trading platform and creating new jobs in its IT development team over the next three years as it expands its business overseas.

Investment in technology development at Delta Index will take place at the rate of €1 million per year, and will see the Dublin-based firm’s in-house technology development team double to 20 people over the next 18 months.

The Irish-owned company is planning significant growth once it has secured a regulatory licence to offer its services to clients outside of Ireland. Joint managing director of Delta Index Michael O’Shea said the company expects to get regulatory approval within a matter of weeks. Expansion will initially take place in the UK, Germany and Hungary, with other countries such as Spain, France and Italy targeted next year.

Beyond that, the company is hoping to expand outside the EU, eyeing up territories such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Australia as potential markets.

“While today and for the last five years we have been limited in our ability to sell financial spread betting (FSB) and contracts for difference (CFD) to just Ireland because of the regulatory status those financial products have, because of a change in the regulatory status, we can now export those products overseas into other jurisdictions and throughout the European Union,” says O’Shea.

“This is something that we had expected and anticipated, so we had built the systems in order to facilitate that.

“We’re essentially an internet company. We can sell and market over the internet; we deliver the service entirely over the internet. So having built the systems once to serve the Irish community, there’s no additional build requirement in order to sell into the UK, Germany, Spain or other jurisdictions, other than to localise the front-end webpage, such as the relevant language or currency if it’s outside the euro zone.”

The company is planning to build up a network of partners overseas, but will start off by selling directly into the markets.

“Initially in the UK and in Germany we’ll be starting by selling directly. Part of the reasoning behind that is by selling directly into the local market we can establish a credibility that then leads to partners. One leads to the other,” says O’Shea.

It also plans to introduce “white label” products for the financial services sector that will allow banks and brokers to provide customers with branded products in the FSB and CFD sector, dealing with the sales and marketing of the products while Delta Index handles the trading side of things.

O’Shea says the FSB and CFD markets in Ireland and Europe are poised for significant growth in the coming years.