Ideal Partners with Barracuda

Decision intelligence firm Ideal is partnering with Ion Group’s Barracuda FX to provide its performance analytics and supervisory risk management solutions to the latter’s clients. The firms say the partnership provides clients with turnkey access to analytics and actionable insights.

Ideal Flow offers independent TCA reporting, client and counterparty analysis, liquidity management, and more in one interface. In addition to best execution reporting, it also provides visualisations and analysis of counterparty behaviour – both over time and by the millisecond – flagging potential issues to investigate and informing client tiering and flow decisions.

The Flow solution is being deployed alongside the Ideal Control solution that streamlines trade supervision for first-line risk management teams, helping to foster more ethical trading behaviour. Particularly relevant for senior managers complying with SMCR, the firm says Ideal Control provides independent validation and evidence of ethical decision-making, greatly mitigating operational, reputational, and regulatory risks. It does this by operationalising trading best practices and principles-based regulation as quantifiable checks, curated alerts, and clear action steps – automating workflows and building a defensible audit trail over time.

“The highly specialised analytics powering Ideal solutions reflect our team’s firsthand experience leading trading desks and quant groups for over two decades in-house, within FX, fixed income, and other asset classes,” says Ideal CEO John Crouch. “Our in-depth understanding of FX-specific dynamics and workflows translates to user-friendly interfaces with intelligent curation built-in.

“Ideal Flow and Ideal Control analyse the same pool of FX trading data through two different lenses, illuminating how traders can optimise their performance and helping supervisory risk managers adhere to the FX Global Code and MiFID MAR code of conduct principles,” he adds.