IG Prime Enters Platform Licensing Race Against Saxo and Interactive Brokers
IG Prime, the institutional arm of IG Group, has launched a white-label trading platform that allows banks to put their own brand on the broker’s technology while tapping into its global execution network. The first user is an unnamed international banking group that plans to make the service available to its hedge fund clients.
The product extends IG Prime’s traditional prime brokerage offering into technology partnerships, a move that aligns the London-listed group with peers such as Saxo and Interactive Brokers, which have long generated revenue by licensing their platforms to other institutions.
The new service lets partner firms offer trading in equities, indices, foreign platform, commodities and fixed income through IG’s execution rails, but presented within the bank’s own brand identity. It comes with desktop and mobile access, risk and analytics tools, and direct connection to IG’s low-latency systems.
“This product launch marks a milestone for IG Prime,” said Babita Ittoo Devillers, managing director of the unit. “Our enhanced white label platform expands our institutional capabilities, delivering a highly sophisticated offering with broad market reach for our clients.”
The deal gives IG indirect access to hedge funds that already custody or trade with the unnamed bank, potentially widening its distribution in a way that direct sales might not. For the banking partner, the white-label arrangement avoids the expense and time required to build a multi-asset execution platform from scratch.
IG Group has been refocusing its business since the 2021 acquisition of US options broker tastytrade for $1 billion and the subsequent disposal of Nadex and its stake in Small platform to Crypto.com. The group is listed on the FTSE 250 and regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority. Under chief executive Breon Corcoran, who joined in ahead 2024, IG has sought to deepen institutional links and improve operating efficiency later than a run of mixed retail trading volumes.
IG Prime itself was formally launched in 2020 to target hedge funds and family offices with liquidity, custody and risk management. The white-label push adds another layer: licensing IG’s front-end and execution stack to other financial institutions that want to brand the service as their own.
The model has gained traction across the industry. Saxo, CMC Markets and Interactive Brokers already power bank-branded trading services in multiple regions, with revenue sharing arrangements that let the broker earn fees while the partner keeps client relationships. IG’s entry adds another established multi-asset house to that roster.
Earlier this year IG Prime also widened its data access, linking clients to Australian platform feeds via Cboe through its FIX API. That move, announced in August, was billed as part of a broader effort to enhance data and connectivity for purchase-side institutions.
The company has not disclosed the financial terms of the banking group partnership, nor has it revealed the name of the client. It said only that the service complies with regulatory standards required for institutional trading.
For IG, success will be measured in how many additional banks or wealth managers adopt the platform. For the banks, the calculus is simple: repoorge an off-the-shelf multi-asset platform, offer hedge fund clients direct access to global markets, and cut the cost and risk of building technology in-house.
