ITG Launches Asia Pac CSA Program

Expanding its Commission Sharing Agreement (CSA) business, ITG has launched the service in the Asia Pacific region in addition to its existing U.S., European and Canadian programs.

“This represents a natural evolution for our CSA business,” says Bob Gasser, CEO of ITG. “We’ve seen good growth in this business area due to our strong balance sheet, agency broker status and our self-directed execution expertise.”

Gasser says Australian markets in particular have seen demand for CSA offerings increase and the company has already launched its first account in the country. ITG offers a multi-currency functionality for clients to use their currency of choice.

While clients based in the Asia Pacific region will benefit form this service, Gasser says clients in the U.S. are also doing more business overseas and can benefit.

“Cleary firms are operating in very diverse geographies and they’re comfortable with a smaller sub-set of execution providers as opposed to research providers and they’re turning to CSAs to manage those relationships,” he adds.

“We have the ability here in the U.S. to pay other brokers globally, as well as other research and service providers and while there are tax implications in various locations I haven’t heard of any barriers to us paying local brokers in any regions,” says Gasser.

ITG has also seen a growing demand to act as an administrator of CSAs for a number of U.S. institutions. “The firms employ us to manage their CSA providers…brokers send commissions to ITG to hold on our balance sheet and we remit those funds and pay to the various counter parties,” Gasser notes.

“It’s an aggregator of CSAs and it makes us a strategic partner with the buy-side customer.”

For clients that want to manage their own processes, ITG also offers its Broker Pay service. Broker Pay is an online portal to view and manage trade details, vendors, invoices, statement and trade history and clients can also request payment of research through the portal.