LONDON — Osttra, a new specialist fintech formed as a joint venture by CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, and financial infrastructure firm IHS Markit, has selected Aspectus as its UK PR agency of record.

The agency’s capital markets team, launched last year, will lead the retained account, with a brief that includes content development and thought leadership to influence asset managers, investment banks and hedge funds to buy the firm’s specialist post-trade technology.

Tim Focas, who heads up the capital markets practice, told PRovoke Media: “Post-trade technology is an esoteric part of the global financial system that helps with the efficiency of back-office administration of clearing after the traders have done the trade. Traditionally a lot of these processes have been done manually and there’s a big drive for greater automation in the back office, to catch up with the reforms in the 1980s that liberated the front-office trading desks in terms of technology."

Osttra’s portfolio of established technology products from both its parent companies includes the TriOptima platform, which already processes around 80% of the world’s derivatives transactions. Focas added: “Osttra has a lot of products with legacy in the industry, and this is an exciting win for us. As well as developing stories, they are really keen for us to challenge their broader marketing strategy – it’s a new brand and there’s a lot of competition out there.”

The capital markets team at Aspectus already works with CME Group, which has a 50% stake in Osttra. The agency now has around 85 people in its offices in London, New York, Aberdeen, Singapore and Luzern.

Osttra’s chief strategy and marketing officer Chris Leaver – the former head of marketing at Thomson Reuters – added: “The Aspectus Capital Markets team has a strong understanding of our business, and of the complexity of post-trade market infrastructure. This makes them the ideal fit to support us in our mission to bringing together the market participants, processes and networks to solve the industry’s most challenging problems.”