Founder & Chief Executive Officer, CMC Markets
CMC Markets with CEO Peter Cruddas | The Telegraph Business Club
CEO Peter Cruddas discusses the early days of CMC Markets, his vision for the company and what it means to run one of the most successful online trading companies in the UK.
Riskwarning:
This video is for general information only and is not intended to provide trading or investment advice or personal recommendations. Any information relating to past performance of an investment does not necessarily guarantee future performance. CMC shall not be responsible for any loss that you incur, either directly or indirectly, arising from any investment based on any information in this video. Please rem...
About Peter Cruddas
Peter Cruddas, founder and CEO of CMC Markets, participated in a 2023 launch event for CMC Invest in Singapore, where he discussed the company's strategy and market positioning. He stated that CMC's competitive advantage comes from owning its pricing, execution, and aggregation, which allows it to undercut competitors. Cruddas said the company aims to retain clients long-term rather than focusing on churn, adding that "nearly 50% of our clients have been with us over three years." He also criticized European regulation, saying "we are regulating ourselves into Oblivion" and described a mandatory modern slavery exam as "a waste of my time." In a 2012 interview, Cruddas said he likes paying taxes because the UK's infrastructure and stable government enable his business to succeed, noting that he paid £50 million in tax when his company went public. He also discussed proposing to then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak that a central bank digital currency could enable real-time VAT collection to reduce tax fraud. Cruddas left school at 15, described his father as an alcoholic, and said his marriage and children are his biggest successes.
Transcript (12 segments)
N
Narrator0:17
These days online trading has given anyone with a computer, a tablet, or mobile phone the opportunity to invest in a myriad of financial markets: FX, indices, commodities, shares, and Treasury bonds. It was a different world back in 1989 when Peter Cruddas founded CMC Markets with one desk, one phone, and a small office in London Wall. He wrote his first trades down on a piece of paper. His ambition was to open up the world's financial markets to the masses.
P
Peter Cruddas0:49
Typically in those days, if you wanted to do a share trade, you would go through your bank manager, but it cost so much to process a ticket through the back office, through the middle office, through credit checking, that the spreads, the cost of doing trades, was so wide. My plan was to offer a service to people that undercut the banks. The banks and brokers didn't really want retail because they liked the big-ticket stuff.
N
Narrator1:19
CMC Markets began as an FX trader, but over time has evolved from the tradition of broking model into an online tech-driven business offering 10,000 products on which to trade across all the key markets.
P
Peter Cruddas1:30
Having gone from a time when we were offering 20-point spreads on the major indices, phone only, and people calling up to do transactions over the course of a couple of minutes, we're now at a point where people are doing 50% of their volume electronically over the mobile phone devices. The other 50% largely comes through the internet, and a very, very small proportion, less than 1% of the business we do, comes through over the phone.
N
Narrator1:50
It's now possible for a taxi driver to pull over to the side of the road and trade any one of 10,000 global financial products from his mobile phone. I mean, that's pretty powerful stuff.
Such has been its growth. Today, 550 people work out of 14 offices around the world. In February 2016, a stock market launch valued the company at just under 700 million pounds. CMC Markets wants to give its 57,000 clients around the world the ultimate trading experience.
Which includes adding new products to its portfolio at competitive prices. Each product Square shows you the current countdown price, the number of existing positions running on within the last 18 months. It's introduced binaries and countdowns, which offer investors the chance to place in limited risk trades on short-term price movements of popular financial products.
P
Peter Cruddas2:53
There is a demand by clients for us to offer products where they can cap their investment losses. It's reacting to the demand at the industry as it's growing and growing and growing, and pioneering those products.
N
Narrator3:06
At the heart of CMC's success is its next-generation trading platform. Launching new products places great demand on the scalability of the technology, and so CMC retains its own in-house team of developers who have not only built a trading platform for desktop but also apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android.
P
Peter Cruddas3:31
Having everything built in-house is a huge advantage. It enables us complete flexibility in regards to how we go about building the platform, what new features we want to build onto it. So because we've got that control, we can then answer and solve a lot of the questions that clients might have. A lot of companies take off-the-shelf offerings. Some other companies, we've always built our own. There might be elements that we've white-labeled from other providers into our technology, but widely it's our own. As a result of that, we've always had a real focus on innovation, and that has always been underpinning our business.
N
Narrator4:02
But for all its technical cleverness and powers of innovation, CMC Markets' reputation is based as much on good old customer service. Investment Trends, the independent financial services research provider, puts CMC Markets in the top 3 of 12 of its key customer service categories in the UK, including judging it the provider with the best overall satisfaction. And this is due in part to the transparency CMC gives its clients. We invite guest speakers. We also have a demo platform so clients can practice before they put in real money. So it's about supporting clients on the journey.
P
Peter Cruddas4:56
I'm very proud of the fact that nearly 50% of our clients have been with us over three years. It's all about retention, it's not about churn, and education is the first step on that journey. If you don't understand the financial markets, the online trading sector is still growing, and as it does, CMC Markets will continue to introduce new products and new instruments to a trading community eager to take advantage of the opportunities the financial markets provide.