Origination at desk scale,
under institutional control.
Every trading house wants more of the market covered. None of them wants a system that can commit the firm to something nobody approved. Those two requirements are not in tension here — they are the design.
Assess it from the inside. There is no demonstration environment, because there is nothing we would show you there that we would not show you here.
Nothing is committed on the firm’s behalf outside limits a named person set in advance.
What may be agreed and what may be invoiced are separate figures, set separately.
One firm cannot see another’s book. Enforced below the application, not inside it.
Every figure, message and authority can be accounted for months later.
Five questions a risk committee will ask. Answered.
Not the questions a brochure prefers. The ones that decide whether this gets signed off.
- “What can it commit us to?”
- Nothing, until somebody with authority writes down what may be agreed and inside what bounds. Above those bounds it stops and asks. The bounds are a document with a named approver, not a configuration flag.
- “Who approved that?”
- Every grant of authority carries the person who granted it and when. Authoring the terms and approving them are separate acts, so nobody can do both in one unreviewed motion.
- “Can it invoice our counterparties?”
- Only inside a limit set for that purpose alone, and only for what the firm is actually owed. A separate daily total applies on top, because a per-item limit on its own is not a limit.
- “Can another client see our book?”
- No. Separation is enforced beneath the application, so a mistake in the application cannot expose one firm’s book to another.
- “How do we stop it?”
- One switch, taking effect immediately, with nothing in flight lost and nothing queued discarded. Stopping is always available and always safe.
The controls, in one place, held by the people who should hold them.
Separate from the trading interface, reachable only by those entitled to it.
Written, approved, armed
Three distinct acts by named people. Terms can exist without being approved, and be approved without being armed — because those are three different decisions.
Roles that actually constrain
An operator may trade and still be unable to widen their own authority. The separation holds at the data layer, so it is not a matter of which buttons are hidden.
Counsel approves the wording
The documents that bind the firm are reviewed prose, approved once by a named person, and nothing unapproved can go out for signature.
Rails you nominate
Bank debit or digital settlement, whichever the firm permits, each with its own ceiling. No credential for the receiving account is held here at all.
An unbroken record
Who did what, when, and under whose authority — including the actions that were refused and why. A refusal is part of the record, not an absence from it.
Coverage you can widen safely
Add breadth and you reach more of the market, not the same counterparties more often. Overlap is structurally impossible rather than discouraged.
Six steps, each one somebody’s decision.
No step can be skipped and none of them can be granted by the system to itself.
- 01
A current price is entered
By a person, with its source. It is the one figure in the system nobody computes, and nothing is priced without it.
- 02
Terms are written down
What the firm is willing to be bound to: the range, the size, the acceptable instruments, the countries excluded.
- 03
A named person approves them
Separate from writing them. Until this happens the terms authorise precisely nothing.
- 04
Autonomy is armed, to a figure
A third decision, with its own ceiling — deliberately smaller than the largest deal the firm would accept at all.
- 05
Counsel approves the wording
The prose that will bind the firm when a counterparty signs it. Approved once, by somebody who read it.
- 06
Only now does anything run
Before all five, the desk negotiates nothing and signs nothing. It stops, visibly, and says which step is missing.
The counterparties an institution needs reached.
Across the products, the instruments and the geographies the physical trade actually moves in.
Counterparties
- Refiners
- Trading houses
- Distribution groups
- Airlines
- Fuel retail networks
- Bunker suppliers
Products
- Crude grades
- Middle distillates
- Jet fuel
- Gasoline
- Fuel oil
- Naphtha and LPG
Terms
- Incoterms 2020
- Documentary credits
- Standby credits
- Inspection regimes
- Laycan structures
- Demurrage terms
Regions
- Northwest Europe
- Mediterranean
- West Africa
- Arabian Gulf
- Singapore and East
- The Americas
Build depth in a territory, not just breadth.
- Many identical swarms in the same category and territory, created in one step
- Portfolios group swarms; roll-ups consolidate portfolios into one view
- Every portfolio reports combined leads, deals and gross won
- Each counterparty is contacted once, whichever swarm found them first
What institutions do instead.
All three work. The question is what each costs in headcount, in control, or in evidence.
| OilTradeConnector | An in-house desk | General-purpose automation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Covers the market in breadth | With headcount | ||
| Authority stated before anything runs | By policy | ||
| Two separate ceilings on commitment | |||
| Cannot widen its own authority | In principle | ||
| Tenancy enforced below the application | N/A | Varies | |
| Instrument wording approved by counsel | |||
| Refusals recorded as well as actions | |||
| Halts completely in one motion | Partially | ||
| Cost independent of volume |
A system that can commit your firm to anything it likes is not powerful. It is unfinished.
The position we take
The constraints we refuse to relax.
- No contact detail that cannot be traced to a publicly checkable source
- No private or scraped data, at any price
- No figure in a binding document that was not computed from a recorded input
- No contract wording generated freehand into something somebody signs
- No commitment of a firm outside limits that firm set in advance
- No regulated check performed or implied — those remain yours and your counsel’s
What an institution asks before it logs in.
Where does our data live, and who else can reach it?
In your own tenancy, separated below the application layer so that a fault in the application cannot expose it. No other firm can read your book, and no member of your firm can read beyond the role you gave them.
Can an operator raise their own limits?
No. Trading and granting authority are different permissions, and the separation is enforced at the data layer rather than by hiding a control.
What happens if a counterparty disputes a figure?
Every figure can be reconstructed from the inputs it came from, with the dates and sources those inputs carried, months after the fact.
Do you perform sanctions or KYC screening?
No, and we do not imply that we do. Where completeness is relevant it is reflected in how much weight a name carries, but regulated checks remain yours and your counsel’s. Any product telling you otherwise is one to read carefully.
Can we run it with autonomy switched off entirely?
Yes, and that is where every account starts. With nothing armed, the desk prepares and proposes and a person signs. Arming it later is a deliberate act with a named approver.
How do we assess it properly?
Log in and look. The controls, the record and the refusals are all visible from the inside, and that is a better basis for a decision than a presentation.
Judge the controls, not the claims about them.
Log in and inspect the authority model, the separation and the record for yourself. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing — which is rather the point.