AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET Online Brokerage Faster Speed and High Availability Drive Revenue The Akamai Difference for Online Brokerage • Designed to improve speed and availability for brokerage transactions – critical to retaining active traders and grow revenue • Delivers high performance for trading, research, account opening, and customer service, by routing traffic around Internet bottlenecks • Helps protect customer data by integrating with existing security infrastructure • Reduces downtime by defending against web and denial-of-service attacks • Helps brokers address rapid growth in web and mobile traffic, without the expense of new infrastructure Online Brokerage Users Demand High Performance and Availability Studies show that investors and active traders are more likely to care about site fundamentals than new feature bells and whistles. Online brokerage users expect their brokerage site to be always available, quotes to be delivered in real time, and trades to execute instantly. If their broker isn’t able to meet these requirements, they’ll trade on a different account, switch to the call center, and stop recommending their broker to others. According to user research by Forrester, 59% of online 8 of the top 10 U.S. online brokers depend on Akamai. Financial firms transact more than $1 trillion in via Akamai annually 6 of the top 10 world stock exchanges employ Akamai 85% of the world’s Internet users are within one hop (milliseconds) of Akamai’s globally distributed platform Worldwide, no one carries more Internet traffic than Akamai brokerage customers have had a dissatisfying experience online, and speed and availability account for 52% of those dissatisfying experiences. Representative Akamai Financial Services Customers By The Numbers: Performance and Online Brokerage Users 29% Online users who encounter performance problems in the research process and opt to go to a competitor’s website 56% Online banking and broker customers who expect pages to download in two seconds or less. 55% Power users of online brokerage sites stating that the impact of poor w eb performance is enough for them to decrease their willingness to recommend a particular firm 54% Online broker customers who would move to higher cost offline channels to trade investments if the website was unavailable or slow to respond. Data source: The Impact Of Poor Website Performance In Financial Services, a research survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Akamai Technologies January 15, 2011 AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET Online Brokerage How Akamai Addresses Core Performance Issues To improve performance, brokerage firms have invested in state-of-the-art Easy – Forex Maximizes Performance in a Market with Three Trillion in Daily Trades application infrastructure for online trading. However, physical distance, Easy-Forex delivers online foreign exchange trading in more than 150 inefficient protocols, Internet congestion, and poor routing on the public countries on a platform that operates in 10 different languages. With Internet can still add seconds – leading to unacceptable transaction currency exchange rates changing at intervals of seconds, peerless performance. The Akamai Intelligent Platform™ overcomes these issues by performance is essential. As Uri Strauss, Head of Operations at Easy-Forex, putting 85% of all global web users just one Internet node (milliseconds) explains: “The consistent delivery of dynamic data to ensure users can trade away from performance optimization. at the best possible price, and the immediate execution of these trades, are BanifInvest Leverages Akamai for a 40% Acceleration of Online Brokerage Services both key. Any slippage has a direct impact on quote-totrade ratios, revenue, BanifInvest is the most advanced retail brokerage company in the rapidly and user retention. ” The company faces a number of challenges, including slow response due growing Brazilian market and is part of Banif Group, which employs 6,000 to public Internet congestion in Australia, the Middle East and China. It also people in 17 countries. To drive customer acquisition and satisfaction, needs to maintain availability and performance to capitalize on periods of BanifInvest’s online brokerage must provide quick delivery of dynamic high trading volume. The incorporation of innovative visual trading tools and content and fast transactions. Brokerage users expect both a rapid sign-up rich content, has made the need to address latency and bandwidth issues an process and fast access to applications that respond without fail. even greater priority. BanifInvest experienced a 40 percent improvement in site speed once it Easy-Forex employed the globally distributed, highly scalable Akamai started using Akamai. Customers were able to buy and sell shares and Intelligent Platform™ for route optimization and to gain scalability. obtain market information much faster. Akamai’s solution integrated Partnering with Akamai enabled Easy-Forex to achieve high performance with BanifInvest’s infrastructure to deliver a secure experience, including levels using a centralized infrastructure without making new capital mandatory encryption for all transactions. “We are very confident with the investments. Easy-Forex achieved better quote-to-trade ratios and the solution, which will become a BanifInvest competitive advantage from now ability to absorb spikes in traffic volume, as well as security against on. We hope to grow between 40% and 60% with the improvements,” denial-of-service attacks. said Everson Ramos, BanifInvest’s IT Superintendent. BanifInvest plans to leverage joint support from Akamai, and its local partner, Exceda, to pursue continued online improvements. “Using Akamai’s service boosted application delivery performance by 50%. What’s more, we gained the capacity to scale on-demand – even during extreme trading peaks. As a result, we’ve been able to support the increase in FX trading volumes precipitated by the recent global economic crisis.” – Uri Strauss, Head of Operations, Easy-Forex AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET Online Brokerage Capturing Business from Independent Financial Advisors with High Performance Mobile Applications A recent IDC study indicates that worldwide shipments of smartphones will reach more than 900 million units by 2015. According to Forrester Research’s 2011 study, 11% of U.S. online adults with investment accounts say they are mobile investors, and 27% of mobile investors are also mobile traders who bought or sold stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or ETFs. Online brokerage firms that are prepared to meet mobile users’ needs for ondemand services have a tangible opportunity to take market share as traditional channels decline in importance. Another Akamai customer, a recognized leader in customer service quality, has paid special attention to delivering mobile investing services by supporting Apple®, Android™, Windows® Phone 7 and BlackBerry® devices. While the majority of the firm’s customers are based in the U.S., the firm is committed to meeting their customers’ needs as they travel across the globe. The brokerage division employed the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ to ensure worldwide performance and security from the firm’s centralized U.S. infrastructure – without the expense of regional or international data centers. Akamai’s platform, highly distributed across the globe, and “anytime, anywhere” support is designed to ensure faster performance through route optimization. A leading brokerage firm has turned the challenge of dealing with the four major mobile operating systems into a competitive advantage. It has used Akamai’s Mobile Detect and Redirect service to welcome (and delight) users with smart choices before the person even lands at the brokerage site. Users accessing the site from a mobile device are sent straight to the mobile web, unless they are using a high bandwidth connection, in which case they are offered an opportunity to download the application specific to their device. Akamai’s distributed platform improves performance from coast to coast Akamai 12 10 8 6 4 ngele s Los A San J ose le Seatt ix Phoen s Dalla s City Kansa i Miam n ingto Wash ta Atlan go Chica 0 York 2 New Average Response Time Seconds Origin The above graph shows how the time to conduct a three-step process for an investment advisor is decreased across the U.S. – providing advisors on the East Coast with a comparable experience to those on the West Coast. AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET Online Brokerage Protection from Future “Flash Crash” Sized Market Events What market conditions and activities created the May 6 event? There is stil On May 6, 2010 at 2:45 PM, the Dow Jones tumbled 650 points in 30 some uncertainty about the causes and how to address the underlying issues. minutes, wiping $850 billion off share prices, before partially rebounding. As a result, a repeat of the flash crash seems quite possible. However, one During this event, Akamai observed a large spike in traffic for our brokerage thing Akamai’s brokerage firm clients do know is that, because of the scale customers, with some sites reaching 10 times their normal daily peak. The of Akamai’s platform, they are already well prepared for a comparable spike good news for Akamai’s clients is that over 80% of all bandwidth and over in website volume. 95% of all hits were served by Akamai during this critical time. While the May 6, 2010 flash crash was the largest web volume spike ever observed in the brokerage industry, it was still less than 1% of the normal daily volume of https traffic delivered by Akamai. The brokerage industry’s giant flashcrash induced web volume spike was barely a blip on Akamai’s network. Akamai’s distributed platform insulates online trading systems from the effects of market events Akamai Response Total Bandwidth Origin Response 1,200 May 6 Flash Crash Bandwidth [Mbps] 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 Sunday May 2 Monday May 3 Tuesday May 4 Wednesday May 5 Thrusday May 6 Friday May 7 The above graph shows the traffic volume of Akamai’s brokerage customers the week of the 2010 “Flash Crash.” While peak traffic during the crash nearly doubled, 80% of bandwidth and 95% of hits were served by the Akamai platform, leaving origin load nearly flat and availability unchanged. As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter. Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States with operations in more than 40 offices around the world. Our services and renowned customer care enable businesses to provide an unparalleled Internet experience for their customers worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers and contact information for all locations are listed on www.akamai.com/locations. ©2015 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Akamai and the Akamai wave logo are registered trademarks. Other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Akamai believes that the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Published 05/15.