Ancoa has said it will not comment on a unconfirmed report that founder and chief technology officer, Andrew Louth, is to leave the surveillance software provider. CEO Kurt Vandebroek stepped down at the end of March.
Louth, who founded the firm in 2010 alongside chief marketing officer Stefan Hendrickx, also declined to comment on the report, requesting that all enquiries be made via the firm’s communication team.
A spokesperson for Ancoa said, “We do not comment on speculation.”
In the absence of a CEO, the Ancoa spokesperson said, “Kurt's responsibilities have been assumed by members of the senior management and the board until a new CEO is appointed.”
Several users, speaking to The DESK under condition of anonymity, have raised concerns about the Ancoa market surveillance service, alleging that they found limitations in processing some large T+1 and historical data sets, and that its real-time system can struggle to process the requisite number of transactions per minute.
According to those customers, Ancoa’s team has made considerable efforts to try and resolve the issues they faced.
Concerns are not voiced by all clients; one firm contacted by The DESK reported it was successfully using Ancoa to process a very high volume of data without problems.
In response to the reports yesterday regarding the platform, an Ancoa spokesperson issued a statement which read:
“We are aware of allegations made against the performance of the Ancoa platform in the market and we are taking all allegations very seriously. We have taken proactive steps to address any concerns or questions our customers may have and welcome any and all communications.
Our technology and processes have been audited by one of the big four consultancy firms to confirm that current allegations in the market are either fabricated, outdated or based on taking information out of context.
Our universe of clients includes global brokerage firms, exchanges, trading venues, buys-side, sell-side firms and regulators, all of whom have successfully deployed the Ancoa capabilities, including real-time. Some of our clients have replaced well known incumbent systems with the Ancoa platform; they and we are satisfied that we help them fulfil their regulatory obligations with confidence.
The nature of our customer base means that every organisation is unique and every deployment different. The Ancoa platform architecture is fully flexible; it allows us to calibrate the platform according to the complexity of each individual client, the asset class and volumes they trade, while enabling them to constantly fine-tune to ensure compliance with the respective regulatory requirements.”