"Banking conditions are better than those of dealing centers..." - Sergey Kharinov, director of Alfa-

- How would you characterize the current situation of state regulation of the market in Russia?

- In many developed countries, regulation of the foreign exchange market by the state authorities has been implemented for a long time. This makes it possible to ensure the reliability of transactions on the market as well as the integrity of each market participant. Unfortunately, our legislation practically does not regulate the activity on the currency market, and this has a tangible effect on it, making it completely non-transparent and allowing unscrupulous dealing centers to operate on it. At the moment there are two bills in the State Duma that imply regulation; one of them has already passed the first reading.

Regulation is also necessary because the market has already reached high turnover rates and continues to grow. Now the issue of protecting clients from poor brokerage services (slippages, requotes, non-market quotes) has become even more important, and all relevant restrictions should be established by law.

- What additional difficulties for customers and market participants may arise after the adoption of the law?

- The main thing for the client is not to change the advantages of the status quo, not to have to run to the branch of the financial company every day to sign another transaction, and not to have problems with the deposit and withdrawal of funds. Due to the fact that the market is very volatile, the liquidity is very high, and the question of how quickly the money will reach the account is very acute.

As for small companies, they simply will not be able to cope with the increase in the size of the authorized and insurance capital, which the legislative initiatives.

- Do you agree with the assumption that the licensing introduced by the law will lead to a significant increase in the cost of services?

- Many traders certainly have such fears. Government regulation will impose additional costs on brokers. But with the highly competitive market that has developed in Russia now, it is likely that many brokers will bear these costs. Moreover, for large players, such as Alfa, such costs are not so significant as to transfer them to their clients.

- In your opinion, what are the prospects for the market in Russia?

- I can say with confidence that banking is very successful in our country. At the moment there are several brokers active in the market who are members of large financial corporations. And several more major banking structures are actively talking about their plans to enter this market.

Despite the fact that the services banking The essence of the work has not been disclosed until recently. Its advantage is that bank trading conditions are better than those of dealing centers, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it contains that degree of reliability, which is typical for financial structures. In fact, we see great prospects in this direction of services. Alfa-Group company is a part of the Alfa Group consortium, and its integration with other banking products of Alfa-Bank as a kindred structure guarantees a high-quality and highly reliable service. We have built an ideal scheme of relations with the client: favorable trading conditions, ideal execution of orders, absence of conflict of interests (i.e. the more the client cooperates and earns with us, the more we earn, because in case of dealing centers the situation is different). We think that this approach to work will be the most popular among traders.

As for the long-term prospects of the market in Russia, they will largely depend on the legal framework.

- Tell us more about the differences between banking and brokerage services of dealing centers

– Banking is quite seriously different from the work of dealing centers, because the scheme of the relationship is based on the commonality of interests of the broker and the trader. If we talk about dealing centers, 80% of them work under the clearing scheme, i.e. dealing centers cover profits of one client at the expense of losses of the other, because all transactions take place inside the company and are not displayed on the open interbank market. This forces the broker to conduct the dialog with the client on executing his orders differently: the desire to minimize the client's positive result and increase the negative one prevails. In our scheme there is no conflict of interest, because our liquidity provider position combined with the client's deals is displayed on the interbank market. That is, the risks are minimized - we benefit when the client earns.