From Russia With Love

An in-depth talk with the COO of the up and coming Forex company Tools for Brokers Albina Zhdanova. She fills us in on her beginnings and how she reached her peak point in the Forex industry.

You have a lot of clients in different countries. (300 in 30 countries.) What is the secret to your success? Now it’s 35, including very difficult markets to enter, such as Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy. These countries are very local and specific, they have their own requirements and style of doing business and you can’t go to them with your boxed solution and common approach. It’s difficult and it’s amazing, how different people are and how similar they are at the same time. The secret is ability to offer individual adjustment for clients no matter how big they are. With the internal process of development we build, we can easily and in a very short term add needed specifications, this is why we were able to build software, that will suit Malaysian clients, UK clients and Japanese clients. I think it is a common misconception that you are only useful for start up brokerages. How can you optimise an established brokerage? I didn’t know about that concept of us to be honest, but good to know, thank you! We have big names in our clients list. What they are looking for is optimization and automatization of the server set up and risk management system. Now we prepared a big update for them with the Business Intelligence system and Risk Management system. Which we had, of course, but it was kind of old styled. So now it’s renewed and we already installed it for clients. You are currently focused on FX & Binaries. Do you plan to move into other areas such as ICO or fund technology? FX will always stay a main focus for us. We had a binary product, but it never been our focus. We also provide crypto trading now, as there is a demand and requests and we of course giving our clients what are they asking for. Our CEO Aleksey Kutsenko joined one successful ICO project and we probably will use that experience in one of our coming soon project. No doubts blokchain technology, coming along with stricting MiFID II going to change the market in 2018. I met the incredibly helpful staff in your Cyprus office, do you have any further plans for expansion? We are planning to have around 10 people in our Cyprus office, organize business trips for it people from Saint Petersburg and maybe will exchange Chinese and Cyprus team at some point. Last two years we expanded our team a lot and this year our team will grow globally. You have been with t4b since 2012. Why did you join? I’ve been invited for the interview as a sales manager. At that time, I’ve been still studying at university, last year and lived in another city. Everything was new for me: finance market, technology, international market – it was challenging. I’ve grown up inside the company up to COO and company itself changed and expanded a lot. I think it was one of my best decisions in life so far to join this company. It’s really a great company, with amazing structure, team and atmosphere inside. Dealing with clients from other regions can be challenging. When you had the role of account manager, what advice would you give to help readers improve their skills? If you have a chance to have a common talk with the representative of that country, ask questions. Ask about education, schools, medical system, what do they usually eat for breakfast, what are their common sayings are, ask them how to deal with them. People love to share their cultures and they will give you all the tips. Just ask at least 5 people. You need to have weighted opinion. What advice would you give to people looking to make a success in the industry? Work hard and give 150% of your efforts. Listen, learn, read a lot and be better a version of yourself. Stand up after falls and be glad to face challenges and when anyone gives you feedback or advise do something. Though – weekends are for you. You have to enjoy life and be happy to be successful. There should always be a balance.

Interview with COO Albina Zhdanova from Tools for Brokers | www.t4b.com