FIA Expo: Reflections from a busy week – where speed really matters

It was truly wonderful attending the FIA Expo in Chicago this week. The energy, conversations, and insights shared throughout the conference were exceptional, and it was great connecting with so many industry peers and partners.  These interactions reaffirmed the value of EXA Infrastructure’s network to the financial community.

When I think about what really matters to our FS customers, the same thought comes up time and time again: speed still rules, but it’s no longer just about speed for speed’s sake. Latency itself has become a kind of currency. It’s something investment firms actively manage, optimise, and protect because microseconds now translate directly into meaningful gains or losses. The physical path between a trader and an exchange is no longer background plumbing; it’s part of the performance model.

At EXA Infrastructure, we see this every day. We work with some of the world’s largest financial institutions, helping them build and refine these infrastructure-driven strategies using a global platform designed for precisely this kind of speed-sensitive environment.

The physical routes behind digital markets

In my experience, the next generation of trading performance will go to the firms that can access the lowest-latency, most predictable routes before anyone else - and that requires networks built specifically for speed.

Trading might feel digital, but it relies on real-world, physical infrastructure. There are huge volumes of trade every day between London and Frankfurt, Chicago and New York, Zurich and Milan… none of it happens in a vacuum. Trades moves across networks that need to be fast, predictable, and engineered for consistency. Subsea cables, in particular, are still the backbone for transatlantic FX and equities flow.

The straighter, cleaner, and more optimised the route, the more predictable the trading environment becomes. And that’s precisely where infrastructure gives firms an edge.

A lot of conversations at FIA Expo came back to how networks can create that edge. For EXA Infrastructure, this is something we’ve been intentionally engineering into our platform.

We boast an extensive network of subsea cables, including the largest number of those crossing the Atlantic from North America to Europe. One of our transatlantic cables, EXA Express, is the lowest-latency route between Europe and North America. Every fibre segment and amplifier has been designed with one goal in mind: cut out unnecessary distance and deliver the fastest, cleanest possible path.

Pair that with the EXA Financial Network, which covers 25 financial exchanges across 11 countries and represents over 60% of global market cap, and you have a platform purpose-built for high-speed market data, rapid execution, and reliability. We’re proud to say these aren’t pipes - they’re performance assets!

Speed defines competitiveness - resilience protects it

This being said, although speed gets most of the spotlight, it’s resilience that keeps desks competitive when things go sideways. Cable cuts (often accidental, caused by dragging ship anchors) are an unfortunate reality of global networks, and even short disruptions can impact pricing, flow, and strategy performance. So, the most successful firms also look for diversity and optionality in a network provider.

At EXA Infrastructure we invest heavily in strengthening that resilience. Builds such as Project Visegrád, the largest pan-European backbone build in 25 years, and our Trans Adriatic Express, the most direct fibre route between Italy, Greece, and Turkey are designed to future proof the most important routes now, and for future flows. And having recently deployed FiberSense’s technology across our Italian network, we can now detect and classify activity along buried routes in real time, long before an issue becomes an outage.

For us, it’s all about making sure that low-latency advantage stays intact, even when the unexpected happens.

Looking ahead

If my conversations at FIA Expo made one thing clear, it’s that latency is a strategic differentiator across the market, not just a technical detail.

That’s why EXA Infrastructure continues to engineer speed and stability into every part of our network. From the world’s lowest-latency transatlantic system, to our dedicated Financial Network and optimised European corridors, we’re eliminating unnecessary distance, reducing risk, and building routes that trading firms can rely on.

If we didn’t get a chance to meet or catch up during the event, I’d welcome the opportunity to reconnect in the coming days. Please feel free to reach out - I’d be glad to continue the conversation.

If you’re a trading firm, set yourself up for success.

Choose the provider built for both ultra-low latency and resilient uptime.
Choose EXA Infrastructure