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Regional Retail<br />
FX Perspectives<br />
customers. If anything the interviews highlighted just<br />
how regionally biased customers can be, and that<br />
having a regional office and language support can<br />
prove attractive to customers rather than having to<br />
deal with a team far away, despite the internet.<br />
"The relative size of CEE markets should be kept in<br />
perspective, as the size of the Polish market dwarfs the<br />
size, for example of the Russian market, though this<br />
market is mainly covered from our Copenhagen<br />
office," stresses Piovarcy. He adds: "Of the smaller<br />
countries, Bulgaria is up and <strong>com</strong>ing for us. Albania is<br />
a problem due to the unstable political situation.<br />
Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro have huge future<br />
potential however with some of those countries there<br />
are still regulatory problems as they don´t offer free<br />
transfers abroad so its difficult from those countries to<br />
actually open an account."<br />
Customer Profile<br />
"The general demographic of the retail FX trader in<br />
the CEE is male age 20-24 to 53-55. Mostly they<br />
start with around $2000, even though they can open<br />
an account for as little as $100," according to<br />
Karol Piovarcsy<br />
>>><br />
Deltastock´s Kisyov. He also states that the customer<br />
will often open a smaller account and then put more<br />
and more resource into the trading account, so that<br />
the customer account experience is a "process", with<br />
the customer learning more and more as time goes on<br />
to take advantage of opportunities offered. This<br />
contradicts with the view that customers <strong>com</strong>e in, lose<br />
some money and necessarily terminate their accounts.<br />
Individual vs Corporate<br />
Both Piovarcsy and Kisyov confirm that most<br />
transaction volume takes place as their bespoke forex<br />
operations provide a viable alternative to dealing with<br />
local banks, and that a significant part of their<br />
turnover now takes place not just from individuals,<br />
but from small to medium size businesses looking to<br />
conduct forex trading for hedging or other purposes<br />
in their local crosses or other currencies. The number<br />
of customers is still 70% retail, according to Kisyov,<br />
and the retail customer makes up more overall volume<br />
than the non-retail.<br />
In Saxo´s case, retail individuals make up only 60%<br />
of client content, and the fact that Saxo offer options<br />
january 2010 e-FOREX | 131
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