Igloo Talks Differentiation
Like many other ETRM vendors, Igloo has been very busy the past few months picking up a couple of new customers in the last quarter. “Both are Companies from outside of Europe that are starting up power and gas trading operations in Europe,” Igloo’s Dale Emmerson told me. “In fact, a majority of our inbound inquiries are similar as there seems to be massive interest in European power and gas at the moment.” It seems that price volatility in very liquid and well-organized markets is creating much of that interest. Additionally, and as forecast by ComTech in the past, it seems that Direct Market Access (DMA) structures offered by some larger traders are proving attractive. “This ‘intermediation’ frees up access to the market and we see oil and other types of traders using it to enter power and gas,” he told me.
Indeed, we have also noted that the energy transition and other trends in the European power and gas markets mean that there is quite a lot of activity with start-ups and new entrants across all segments of the industry. These smaller entities gravitate towards solutions like Igloo and others that are fast to implement and offer robust functionality. “The process of getting connected to all the markets like ICE, CME, Trayport and so on can be very time consuming. Yet with our solution, that is all there from day one,” Dale told me. “Igloo also does all the DMA reconciliation needed and those fees can be very complex varying with product, term, volumes and so on.” Igloo offers its cloud solution on a managed services basis so that traders can focus on trading and need not hire IT and related support staff. Dale also claims very quick implementation timescales for Igloo at 8-10 weeks, with all implementations done remotely.
Igloo has been busy also on the development front where it will be adding significant functionality around battery optimization including allowing automation of rules around dispatch, for example. Igloo also supports autotrading on EPEX and NordPool and will be rolling out a connection to Xoxerve/Gemini for gas markets to compliment its existing connectivity to ELEXON.
“We see increasingly sophisticated traders in the market too”, he told me. “Recently, we have started to be included in larger opportunities as well against traditional competition and have done very well.” He points out that these traders do a lot of volume and are profiting from volatility in the market.
”Igloo has robust connectivity to markets as standard and offers live positions and PnL, position for traders. These are the things the market wants and needs,” he said. This is apparently a formula for success as Dale points to a steady stream of new wins.
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