Richard Whelan

Chief Executive Officer

Richard launched his career at Deutsche Bank having obtained a BA in Economics with distinction at UCD and completing a scholarship with distinction in UCD Post-Graduate School of Business, and over 15 years between Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, UBS and Northern Trust ran every aspect of Treasury Operations and OTC Operations culminating as SVP/Global Head of Treasury Operations.

Richard’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in having learnt all aspects of eTrading across all OTC asset classes front to back, and founded FIXI PLC with Marcus Cumberland in 2006. FIXI PLC was an FCA Regulated market maker which was one of the first firms to offer what is now known as a Prime-of-Prime solution to Brokers and the Buy Side market space alongside pricing into European Banks, Hong Kong Bullion shops to servicing UHNW players in the FX and Metals space. Having put FIXI PLC on a firm footing, Richard was SVP/Global Head of Treasury Operations at Northern Trust, and have since started up and run five FCA or ASIC Regulated entities; ranging from Derivatives brokers to eWallet/Digital Banks to Asset Management firms.

Richard finally decided to acquire his own firm Alpha Trade brand in 2021 with two trusted partners and joined as CEO in February 2022 to help drive the strategy of the firm alongside the Board.

Alpha Trade has already established a mature multi-asset class product offering which matches or beats every player in the Prime-of-Prime space, however, its vision is to operate as a Boutique Liquidity Provider offering unique pricing solutions across an array of clients; ranging traditional derivatives brokers, Hedge Funds and Family Offices.

Alpha Trade has rapidly acquired a number of ASIC and other regulated brokers as clients and has penetrated the Family Office market due to its competitive, flexible and wide ranging product offering. Digital Assets are where Alpha Trade really stand out with a pricing and commission model more competitive that every Western player in this space having spent six months sourcing liquidity from an array of US and European Market Makers.

Richard adopts the principal of Jamie Dimon in that if you cannot be within the three best providers in a market, don’t enter that market. Alpha Trade from FX to Digital Assets has already reached this goal, and 2022 will be the year where market penetration will be its entire focus. A number of executive announcement are imminent to achieve that goal and in the meantime please email [email protected] if you want to have a completely new collaborative broker experience.

Dean Yu

Chief Technology Officer

Dean started his entrepreneurial career early as co-founder and was CTO of Visionary Financials upon gaining his Bachelor’s Degree in Telecommunication in Shanghai Jiao Tong University and gained Master’s Degree in Information Technology in UNSW.

Shortly after this venture, Dean commenced his career in the financial industry, working for Vantage FX, one of Australia’s top foreign exchange brokers, being responsible for development trading and risk control systems.

With years of experience working closely with the dealing desk and primary liquidity providers, he then started his own venture focusing on providing customised risk control and management system to all types of trading brokers and financial institutions.

Kieron Harlowe

Chief Currency Strategist

Kieron is a highly strategic and commercially astute Business Manager with particular strengths in growing sales and profitability in the Property, Sales, and Investment Banking sectors.

Kieron is an Investment Banking professional with over 25 years’ experience trading and managing G10 Foreign Exchange teams in both London and Asia. He has been regulated by the FCA in London along with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Futures Module 2, FMRP), and qualified in both Mifid 1&2 modules.

His proven track record of extraordinary achievements include:
•  Built a high performing FX trading team from the ground up, ROI between 2011 and 2014 increased by 35 percent.
•  Enhanced G10 franchise in Asia by setting up and managing proprietary trading books whilst reporting directly to the Head of Foreign Exchange in London. The desk saw a 20 percent increase in performance on a year-on-year basis.

Kieron has spearheaded setting up credit limits with counterparties on both a local and global basis by liaising with I.T. and various Back Office functions to ensure a smooth transition for an FX business startup in Singapore.

Charlie Koh

Senior Software Engineer

Charlie was awarded a First Class Honors by National University of Singapore School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

Charlie is a versatile engineer who has worked on numerous projects in a variety of fields, including the backend for e-wallet transactions, payment terminals, forex trading backoffice, social care and networking apps.

He has been active in many facets of IT, from backend development with c / java / go, frontend development with php / Vue, scripting with python, infrastructure deployment with terraform, to microservice design and deployment with yaml / kustomize / helm.

Farzana Abu Saamah

Head of Internal Audit

Farzana achieved a MA (Hons) in Accounting and Business Finance from Heriot Watt University and currently is completing her ACCA qualifications. Farzana was a Senior Audit Associate at BDO before joining Alpha Trade.

Farzana joined Alpha Trade in part to work on the other side of the fence and had a particular interest in the broker-dealer and hedge funds space to expand her knowledge. She is a highly valued member of the team.

In her spare time Farzana enjoys volunteering both for homeless charities and education for those in need, but without the resources to pay for additional tutoring.