At FX Solutions, It All Comes Down to Scalability

Many companies like to throw people at their problems. Not

.

"The way we approached the business was very different from a lot of our competitors," Michael Cairns, CEO of FX Solutions, told Benzinga. "When we first started, we focused on technology rather than throwing people at a problem. We looked at, 'Where do we want to be in three to four years and how do we get there?'" Cairns said that the one thing that stuck in his mind was that the company needed to be scalable. "There are obviously a lot of clients out there and a lot of opportunity out there, but the only way to get it is to use technology and not have 500 people do the job of a process on a computer," Cairns explained. "We set ourselves up more as an Internet company, a technology company, and basically morphed." Built from the ground up to be a leading foreign exchange broker, FX Solutions was founded in 2001. The company serves retail clients, white label partners, and institutional trading partners from all over the world. It was acquired by City Index Group in 2008. "To me, it all comes down to scalability," Cairns added. "FX Solutions, before our acquisition by City Index, was a global business ran out of New Jersey with less than 100 employees. Some of our competitors, both in the U.S. and overseas, have multiple hundreds of employees. Some have over 1,000 -- to run the same type of business!" FX Solutions did not want to imitate this business format. Instead, the company aimed to innovate. "Let's say you have 10,000 clients and you can't take anymore," Cairns continued. "You want to be able to have 100,000 clients or 200,000 clients and not skip a beat." Without the latest advancements in technology, this would be nearly impossible to achieve. "The fact that the client can deposit funds, withdraw funds, check trading history, [and] check margin requirements [online] means the client does not have to lift a phone and call someone who we have staffed in our office 24 hours a day for that specific purpose," Cairns concluded. "If they can do it online, it increases the scalability of our business."