NovaFori relishes working with 'top names in Singapore'

Garry Jones, the chief executive of NovaFori and former chief of the London Metal Exchange, has said he is keen to work with “the top names in Singapore” after signing a landmark deal to supply the technology for a new Singapore-based carbon market.

NovaFori, which rebranded from Perfect Channel earlier this year, has been chosen as the tech supplier for Climate Impact X, a new carbon credit market backed by the Singapore Exchange, DBS, Standard Chartered and Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund.

The mandate represents the first major deal for NovaFori since it rebranded and an interesting project in the fast-growing area of sustainability.

Speaking to Global Investor, Jones said the calibre of the new exchange’s backers is an attractive feature of the project.

He said: “Those four together have fantastic networks so, before the market starts, they are doing lots of market research. Most markets fail because you haven’t done enough market research into what the client really wants.”

Jones added: “SGX brings the exchange piece, DBS is the biggest and most digitally advanced bank in the region and Temasek is representing the government’s desire to be the global centre for new asset classes.”

The backing of sophisticated and proven financial firms is a key attribute as the exchange is intended for institutional rather than retail players who tend to be more cautious when trading new markets.  

Jones added: “There are platforms for all sorts of things out there but you have to have the sponsorship and the thing that excited us about this is that it’s the top names in Singapore.”

Climate Impact X (CIX) plans to unite international buyers and sellers of carbon credits. Its interim chief executive Mikkel Larsen, also the chief sustainability officer at DBS, has said CIX should enable the voluntary market to scale-up over time.

Paul MacGregor, the head of sales and marketing at NovaFori who was LME’s head of sales under Jones, said: “There are lots of different integrations that are needed to bring this market to life because there are lots of information and pricing sources that we need to integrate including integrations with settlement engines so there is a lot to bring together here, but that is exactly the sort of thing that NovaFori does well.”

NovaFori rebranded in late April to reflect the changes made by Jones at the fintech, originally called Perfect Channel, since he joined in early 2020.

He said: “We rebranded the company a few months ago to reflect the fact that we have changed the company completely in the last two years and the fact that digital transformation is all about new markets, so we wanted a name to fit the mission.

Jones said the CIX deal is consistent with a broader theme at the firm: “We have targeted the whole ESG and green agenda as a sector where we want to be seen as a key technology vendor and it ties in nicely with the rebrand.”

The chief executive said the company has also grown rapidly in recent months. “We have increased our headcount by 33% this year, and we have increased headcount by 16 in the past six weeks alone.”

NovaFori is designed to help antiquated firms transition to the latest marketplace technology, which draws on Jones' and MacGregor’s experience running the LME.

Jones said: “For us the transition from the financial and commodity market where we ran exchanges to this sort of world is not that different. If you’re running an exchange these days you are running a technology business. The difference now is that we are taking the thought process and analysis, and applying them to real world problems.”

The NovaFori chief added: “This new project in carbon credit trading is an example of a different kind of asset where we are applying exchange-type technology to non-traditional markets.”