FIA today announced the winners of its annual pitch competition for startups at the FIA Expo. The pitch competition is part of FIA’s Innovators Pavilion, a platform for introducing startups to trading firms, clearing brokers, exchanges and other firms active in the global derivatives markets. 

The winners were selected by a panel of six judges with expertise in evaluating emerging solutions in capital markets. The judges based their decisions on presentations given by each startup during the pitch competition, which took place in two stages on November 19 and 20.

This year’s winner was Tradewell Technologies, a startup based in New York and London that is bringing algorithmic trading tools to the corporate bond market. The judges commended the company for its potential to transform the way that asset managers execute their trades in corporate bonds and bring greater efficiencies to the work flow in that market, and potentially other fixed income markets around the world. 

Two companies were chosen as runners-up in the competition to be Innovator of the Year – ClearToken and Grão Direto. Grão Direto is a Brazilian company that is bringing modern technology and data analytics to the trading of soybeans and other agricultural products in Brazil. The judges commended the company for the way it uses mobile apps and other modern technology to connect farmers with buyers as well as the way its platform has provided greater transparency into the Brazilian grain markets. Cleartoken is a UK company that is developing a central counterparty for digital assets that will operate under the supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority. The judges commended the firm for offering a solution for the digital asset markets that allows trading venues to solve for clearing through an independent platform.  

"This year’s cohort includes many terrific companies and the judges spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of each company before making their final decisions. The winners individually have tremendous potential to bring innovation into financial and commodity markets, and collectively they demonstrate an impressive range of entrepreneurial innovation," said FIA's SVP for Publications, Data and Research Will Acworth. "On behalf of FIA, I thank the judges for taking the time to listen to all of the presentations and bring all of their experience and expertise in the questions and answers with the companies and into the final deliberations on the winners. "

This year's judges were: Alyssa Blankenship, Investor, DRW Venture Capital, DRW Holdings; Mira Witzig Borja, VP of Markets Strategic Investments, Citigroup Global Markets; Alex Gheorghe, Investor, Illuminate Financial; Nathaniel Jackson, Director, Prime Derivatives Services, Barclays; George Kalant, Venture Capital Lead, Chicago Trading Company; and Tim Perevozchikov, Vice President - Quantitative Research, Two Sigma Securities, LLC.