FTEN was established in order to redefine how a vendor services its clients, with the goal being to provide exceptional service without competing. As there was a market need to provide broker-neutral DMA technology, FTEN started white-labeling a DMA system for resale by U.S. clearing firms to offer their trading clients direct access to the markets. After implementing several clearing firms, it became clear that broker dealers were using multiple trading systems, each with its own risk component, but no way to aggregate risk management across systems in real-time. At that time, cross-market risk management was only available end-of-day or next-day, but not real-time across multiple systems.

Instead of building real-time risk management as a feature of FTEN’s DMA system, the decision was made to shut down FTEN’s front-end DMA, and focus on delivering high-speed routing coupled with cross-market pre-trade risk management, independent of any DMA platform available. This ultimately helped lead the way to low-latency trading.

Over the years, FTEN has consistently refocused its technology and vision to be one step ahead of market needs, continually innovating to deliver flexible technology that can adapt with market structure and regulatory changes. FTEN filed a patent on its innovative approach to real-time risk management in 2003 and officially received the patent in 2010 -- right before the SEC adopted the Market Access Rule, requiring broker dealers providing market access to practice real-time cross market risk management.

FTEN grew fast enough to make the Inc. 500 listing of fastest growing companies in the U.S. and ranked in the top 50 in both 2009 and 2010 before being acquired by NASDAQ OMX.