The world’s $100tn investment market is going borderless. Moreover, as Barry Bernstein, Managing Director, COO – Technology Services at ViewTrade explains, the infrastructure making it possible is surprisingly simple. Moving money across borders used to take days and cost a fortune. Now it happens in milliseconds for pennies. His pitch is easy to summarise: ViewTrade’s user-friendly tech is enabling many retail investors to easily participate in cross border trading for the first time. Examples might include Chinese expats investing in homeland markets to Indian investors accessing US equities. No matter the trade, geography is no longer a barrier.
Tradition pain points included slow settlements, high fees, and regulatory complexity. The ViewTrade solution offers a global infrastructure, enabling real-time trading across borders and at a vastly reduced cost.
PBI: For any of our readers that do not know ViewTrade, can you summarise what the ViewTrade value proposition is? And something about the products that are most popular e.g. stock trading, options, fixed income, private markets et al
Barry Bernstein, Managing Director, COO – Technology Services:
We like to refer to ViewTrade as the force behind fintech. For over two decades, with over 300 clients in more than 30 countries, ViewTrade has provided technology, infrastructure, and brokerage services that enable firms worldwide to offer sophisticated global investment experiences to their clients. Our value proposition is straightforward: ViewTrade Technology empowers banks, brokerages and advisory firms with the ability to accelerate time to market, scale cost-effectively, and offer differentiated cross-border investment solutions.
Our in-demand capabilities include US and International equity and options trading, fractional share investing, and access to private markets and integrated market data content solution. As our clients grow, they look to us to support more complex investment products and multi-asset class functionality — all delivered via our modular API architecture or turnkey white-label solutions.
PBI: How would you summarise the benefits for financial firms you partner with and also for retail investors?
Bernstein:
For financial firms, ViewTrade eliminates the heavy lift of building and maintaining global financial technology infrastructure. We provide integrated technology solutions that drive everything from the user and onboarding experience to operational workflows and trading technology — enabling firms to go live faster and focus their resources on customer acquisition and innovation.
For retail investors, our clients, referred to as partners, can offer seamless access to U.S. and global markets, with the same level of functionality and transparency they’ve come to expect domestically. Through our partners, their clients are provided with access to asset classes and markets that were historically out of reach for many investors.
PBI: You have said that embedded finance tech enables financial firms to power a new era of global investing; can you summarise some of the benefits e.g. speed, reduced cost?
Bernstein:
Absolutely. Embedded finance is changing the game — and global investing is the clearest use case. By integrating capital markets’ functionality directly into their platforms using our APIs, firms can bring new services to the market in weeks instead of months or years.
It also brings major cost advantages. Rather than building their proprietary infrastructure from scratch, firms can plug into a battle-tested ecosystem that’s scalable, secure, and compliant. This efficiency translates into lower operational costs, more access for end clients, and the flexibility to innovate continuously.
PBI: Given your global footprint, you will be well qualified to observe which markets are the most exciting for growth in the short-medium term? Where are your potential for retail investors to participate in cross-border trading for the first time e.g. you have been active in the GCC countries I believe, a launch in Australia—any other markets that merit a mention?
Bernstein:
Yes, we’ve seen strong momentum in the GCC — particularly in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait — where demand for international diversification and digital wealth solutions is accelerating. These markets are benefitting from regulatory modernisation and a rising generation of investors who expect seamless access to global opportunities.
We’ve also recently expanded into Australia, where there is a vibrant fintech ecosystem and growing appetite for cross-border investing. Looking ahead, we see strong potential in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and select markets in Africa where mobile-first platforms are leapfrogging traditional financial infrastructure.
PBI: And something about how ViewTrade is utilising AI e.g. risk management; customer engagement; personalisation?
Bernstein:
AI is already enhancing many aspects of the industry — and we see it as a key enabler of smarter, safer, and a more personalised investing user experience. In the future, we believe AI will support risk management, confidential real-time surveillance, fraud detection, and anomaly monitoring across user activities and patterns.
For customer engagement, we’re supporting our clients by using of AI technology to better segment users, recommend relevant content, and enhance onboarding experiences. And we’re actively exploring AI tools that can help personalise the trading experience — from predictive analytics to conversational interfaces that simplify complex financial tasks.
Barry Bernstein, Managing Director, COO – Technology Services at ViewTrade
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