Lead Securities & Investment Limited, a subsidiary of Lead Capital Plc, has unveiled an online trading platform to provide more transparency and accountability in stock market transactions.

The portal, known as LeadTrader, was aimed at easing and boosting stock market for capital market investors all over the world, the firm said.

The Chairman, Lead Securities & Investment Limited, Mr. Abimbola Olashore, said that it was developed with the aim of meeting the needs of investors within and outside the country who had been yearning for a portal that would enable them to carry out their transactions with higher level of transparency.

He spoke at the inauguration of the product at the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos, noting that the portal was designed to conform to global best solutions for online real-time trading of securities utilised by retail and institutional investors in the advanced economies.

According to him, it also provides a secure and efficient electronic channel of buying and selling stocks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

This, he said, would be done in a transparent manner, thus giving investors full control over their mandates.

He said, “Before now, retail and institutional investors had been sending mandates to their brokers to buy and sell stocks via emails and letters. Technology has changed the way that is done and LeadTrader has been developed in such a way as to conform in every aspect with the global best solutions for real-time trading of securities utilised by investors in advanced economies.

“The platform, therefore, provides investors the convenience of executing their trades online through a range of devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets and other mobile devices.”

Explaining how it worked, he said that orders submitted via LeadTrader would pass through a compatible Order Management System where appropriate compliance checks had been put in place to prevent erroneous orders going into the NSE’s trading engine.

Olashore commended the leadership of the NSE on its efforts towards ensuring that the Exchange was transformed into a world-class market.

It noted that the inauguration of the X-Gen trading platform, a robust 21st century technology, with a fix-enabled trading capabilities and timely market data to vendors since September 2013 clearly demonstrated the commitment.

The Managing Director, Lead Securities, Mr. Wale Adewunmi, said the company responded to the initiatives of the NSE by upgrading its existing trading infrastructure to a world-class trading portal.

He noted that the platform offers investors a secure channel to buy and sell shares of companies listed on the NSE.

“It is integrated with the payment switch that allows investors to add funds to their brokerage account, using credit/debit cards. In addition, LeadTrader provides real-time market data (bid/offer prices and volume) for informed trading decisions,” he said.

Source: Punch (by Udeme Ekwere)