# CMC Markets targets multi-asset expansion through retail innovation (LON:CMCX)

- Link: https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/cmc-markets-targets-multi-asset-expansion-through-retail-innovation-loncmcx/4121259072
- Published: 2026-07-29T13:10:47+01:00
- Author: Amilia Stone

**CMC Markets plc** (LON:CMCX) Global Head of Retail Benjamin Charbonneau caught
up with DirectorsTalk to discuss changing retail trading expectations, client-led
technology, multi-asset growth opportunities, and the strategic importance of the
company’s Bermuda hub.

**Q1: What are the main trends that you are seeing across retail trading clients
today?**

**A1:** Over the years, what we are noticing on our side is retail clients are becoming
much more sophisticated, more global, more multi-asset. They want powerful technology,
but they want it simple. They want more education, but they also want it to come
with transparency, trust. From what we are seeing on our side is that the real opportunity
is really to combine that institutional quality, that institutional branding, that
35-plus years of trust that we have on our side, and combine it in a platform that
makes it intuitive and effectively available anywhere that they are in the world.

You can have a client, for example, look at foreign exchange in the morning, trading
on macroeconomic news, and then they will kind of drift away into maybe oil or gold,
and then they will look at an equity index just before the closing. So, what we 
are seeing is that people have greater expectations when it comes to platform and
technology. They want everything, who doesn’t? Ultimately, they want it all, and
they want it simple.

I remember 10 years ago when we were doing platform run-throughs, and I would spend
45 minutes to an hour and a half on one client going through a trading platform 
because they were quite sophisticated back 10 years ago. Now, what you are seeing
is that that same platform has the same functionality, the same, I guess you could
say, leading technology in terms of functionality, but it is a lot simpler to use,
if that makes sense.

A client coming to a new platform now, if they don’t get it right away, they generally
bounce and go to another platform that is able to offer them the same powerful technology,
but in a more intuitive manner.

So, I would say that the demand here is absolutely shifting towards powerful technology,
but offered simplistically, almost in a minimalist kind of functionality lifestyle.
That is how I would describe that.

**Q2: How is CMC Markets responding then to those changing client needs?**

**A2:** We’re constantly innovating. I think, as one of the pioneers in the space,
again, almost 40 years now, we have always taken what the client wants first and
built upon that.

Generally speaking, we haven’t been making tweaks or introducing functionality that
is not driven by a client. Most of the time, we’ll listen to the clients and what
they say, and say, we release things like TradingView functionality, not only from
a trading chart perspective inside our trading platform, but also the actual integration
itself with TradingView to be able to actually place trades via TradingView and 
on our side.

So, that is not our technology. Really, from our perspective, we have made a shift
towards, instead of building everything in-house and saying, oh, well, because we
could build everything, right? We are a technology company. We build technology 
for massive businesses everywhere around the world. But again, it is not about building
proprietary tech. It is about listening to what the clients want.

Some examples of that are, if a client wants TradingView functionality, because 
that is one of the better charting platforms in the world, they really invest all
of their time and energy in providing some of the best charts. Well, instead of 
fighting against that trend and seeing something like TradingView as a competitor,
we see it as a value-add. So, we consume those charts in our trading platform to
give people the best kind of trading experience within the CMC environment, within
that institutional trust environment.

Same thing with MetaQuotes trading platforms, whether third-party platforms, and
there is a multitude of them out there, clients want what they want.

So, instead of fighting against that, we try to offer a wider breadth of products
and functionality and just be driven by what the clients want and ensure that we
deliver that in a CMC fashion, which is on time when they need it and, obviously,
with a very, very simple and powerful experience on the trading platform.

**Q3: Where do you see the biggest opportunities for CMC Markets in retail over 
the next few years?**

**A3:** That question is probably the biggest question that comes up on a weekly
basis with us.

I have been in this particular role for about 18 months, and this role is the Global
Head of Retail. What does that really mean from a global CMC perspective when you
have got office heads and directors and managing directors in Singapore, Australia,
New Zealand, and Dubai has now got a presence and Canada has got a presence?

So, a Global Head of Retail, from our perspective, is really about prioritising 
the biggest initiatives. We are definitely not short of ideas, if anything, we have
got an infinite list of ideas coming from clients, coming from staff, coming from
everybody else around the world. You saw the Everton sponsorship, naturally.

So, we are doing things in a big way and there is an absolute need to prioritise
the items that make the most sense earlier on and then move on to those, I guess,
not necessarily less important, but just less impactful products as we kind of go
on through time.

From our perspective, we are not agnostic to prediction markets, proprietary trading,
we are watching everything across the entire field of products that are actually
coming out. Digital assets over the last five years are something that has become
quite mainstream now. So, when we talk about a multi-asset platform, we absolutely
include digital assets in there versus, say, 10 years ago, when it was something
that really wasn’t on the radar.

Multi-asset platform to us means offering the clients whatever they want and at 
the time that they do need it, whether it be digital assets, whether it is forex,
whether it is commodities, but also the multi-asset side of it isn’t just an asset
class within a derivative, but it is an actual asset class outside of that. So, 
offering cash equities, being able to collateralise products, being able to do more
with your money, earn more with your money. That is what we are going with, a general
overview, I guess you could say, of where our strategy goes.

**Q4: Now, Bermuda is an important part of your role. Why is the Bermuda office 
strategically relevant for CMC Markets?**

**A4:** A question that comes up often: why did CMC Markets decide to open an offshore
entity a few years ago? From our side, it goes back to a conversation we had with
the founder when I was Head of Singapore back in the day, and effectively saying
that we do really, really well in core markets and CMC, again, a very long time 
ago, pioneered, or was one of the pioneers of, retail trading, making it accessible
to everyone.

That has never really gone away, but what has changed over time is our ability to
onboard global clients.

Regulations are unique in every jurisdiction, and what we have noticed is we have,
for the better part of a decade, had a massive increase in interest in CMC products.
Now, that interest could come from Latin America, could come from Africa, could 
come from Southeast Asia, and we’ve always had that demand, but it has really, really
grown over the last 10 years, consistently every year. That’s without us really 
doing anything active in those regions.

As a [FTSE 250](https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/news/ftse-250) company, 
publicly listed company, of course, and 35-plus years of trust, you naturally get
all of this organic interest from people wanting to open an account with you. However,
we couldn’t in most of those jurisdictions in the past.

The main reason for that is because of a lot of these AML requirements, for example,
a basic requirement for opening an account anywhere is to be able to verify a client’s
identity. Now, if you use a region like the UK or Australia, it becomes very difficult
to verify someone from, say, Mexico or Costa Rica or Brazil or any other market,
for that matter. Generally speaking, you need to tap into some of these more technical
things, like credit bureaux and electoral roll systems. How do I know that you’re
really you?

Now, Bermuda, in short, its regulatory environment is far more progressive in terms
of allowing technology to be used to do verification of clients. So, things like
liveness tests, when you open something, an account, and you effectively have facial
recognition, biometrics, well, it’s open to using that software to be able to validate
clients.

So, what we’ve done is simply taken this massive organic demand for our product,
and we simply applied for and were then granted, a licence by the Bermuda Monetary
Authority that allows us to leverage a tier-one jurisdiction when it comes to regulation
and allows us to onboard clients from nearly every corner of the world.

We’ve simply taken demand that was already there, and we’ve created, innovated and
launched a new programme that allows us to onboard these clients with the proper
governance, and so that’s why the Bermuda hub exists.

**Q5: What should clients and investors expect from CMC Markets Retail going forward?**

**A5:** A lot more innovation, a lot more. It’s difficult to do these conversations
without actually alluding to anything.

So, in my current position, I can say that CMC, as always, will continue to push
the envelope forward, will continue to listen to clients. You can expect big things
from CMC in general, as we always have. It’s quite public that our Everton sponsorship
was announced, that is an indication of what’s to come for CMC. We’re absolutely
not slowing down, our founder is far from slowing down, he’s constantly pushing 
for new, big initiatives.

That’s all I’ll say for that but it’s a very exciting time for CMC and I don’t think
any of us are going anywhere anytime soon. We’re very, very excited for what’s to
come.

Share on: