International Investor Magazine sat down with Marina Strauss, CEO of award-winning online trading platform, Forex4you to find out more about its keys to success.
Congratulations on winning the Forex Broker of the Year award (Asia) and the Affiliate Program of the Year award (Asia). What would you say contributes to driving the success of Forex4you?
I’m pleased that all the hard work and effort that we have put into the business has been recognized and our strategic expansion into Asia has been worthwhile. This year, Forex4you will be 14 years old, this is a significant age for a brokerage as it shows stability in our operations. With every year older, we grow bigger and better.
Success and hard work go together, but it also relies on the values and direction that every company holds. Forex4you has always been driven by its core values of competency, honesty, transparency, and integrity. We are driven to innovate and to foster long term relationships to achieve international expansion. When we remember the basics, we can extend ourselves and grow the business.
Success also comes from the team and I’m proud to say that we’ve also grown in talent across the years. Today our Forex4you team comes from multiple nationalities from around the globe and all are trained to be efficient and the best at what they do.
What is Forex4you’s secret to client growth?
Our first and foremost priority has always been our clients and partners. We offer one of the best trading services, and as a business that functions as a platform, we would be nothing without our clients. Asia is a continent that places much value on society. What we’ve realized is that a happy client will foster more clients and this has fueled our success. Till date, we have over 2 million opened client accounts. I would say our not-so-secret formula for client happiness is our transparency, customer service, and great product development.
I think it’s intuitive that when it comes to client finances, that trust is the major key factor. We have always ensured that our clients’ funds are safe and secure. Deposits and withdrawals with us are instant, and throughout the years, we have kept our operations transparent with all our clients. We are internationally regulated by BVI and we are audited successfully each year by KPMG.
We also have an excellent customer service team that maintains the happiness of our clients. They function 24/7 and can cater to the growing demands of our international expansion. At present our team can communicate in 12 languages and we have an extremely fast average first-response-time of 5 seconds.
In our 14 years, we have also developed numerous different features on our platform in order to respond to feedback. For example, Forex4you has another product and trademark, Share4you; our excellent copy trade service. Another product we developed for Asia was our Forex4you mobile app, which allows for a better trading experience from the palm of your hand.
As a trading platform what keeps Forex4you competitive in the Asian market?
We believe that trading should be for everyone, and I think what’s competitive about our company is the effort and flexibility that we’ve placed on our trading conditions. There is no minimum deposit for clients to start trading. Our cent account also allows trading from 0.01 pips. Our Forex4you MetaTrader4 (MT4) platform and the usage of Expert Advisors were also quite welcomed by the Asian market. Another move we made to cater to the Asian population was to launch our islamic swap free accounts.
For expert traders in Asia, we keep our spreads low at 0.1 pips and we offer a leverage of up to 1:2000. Our trading execution time is also impressive at 0.5 seconds. Till date, I’m happy to say that we’ve executed over 1 billion trades.
What is the key to your success with the partners through your Affiliate Program?
I think the key to any strong and healthy relationship, in business or outside it, is when the partnership is transparent, honest, and mutually beneficial. It’s a very basic but important touchstone that people often overlook.
On a technical level, I would say that there are two main factors to the success of our partnerships. The first is our unmatched commission programs and the second is the positive experience that partners gain when they work with us.
Can you elaborate more on these 2 factors?
Certainly. The first factor is our commission programs, also known as our partnership programs. They are specially designed to maximize the potential of every partner that we work with. We want partners to be able to choose how they work with us and we give them the freedom to do so. In fact, we have created multiple programs to cater to a vast variety of different needs across the region. Our commission structure is the best in the market, and we work on a very fair and very generous system. The higher the result a partner achieves, the more rewards he receives. Last year alone, we hit a company milestone and paid out over 29 million dollars to our partners.
The second factor is the unique experience that a partner enjoys when he works with us. We go out of our way to ensure that our partners are well taken care of, from luxury gifts to exclusive international getaways, there is little more than a partner would want. Our personal key account managers are extremely accessible, responsive, highly trained, and efficient. In fact, I do not think there are any partners that would say that they did not enjoy working with us. In every survey we’ve sent out, we’ve gotten 100% when it comes to our partner programs. Once a partner is on board, they stay on!
Any take on the future of Forex4you?
The forex landscape is an ever-changing one. Anything can move the market at any time, it’s certainly exciting but that means that what works one day, may not work the next. While we cannot predict the future, we always ensure that we keep our eyes and ears open, and we stay on our feet. We certainly have many milestones, projects and developments in our roadmap, and we look forward to releasing them soon. For now, we hope to maintain and improve our standards and services across the region to keep our clients and partners happy!
