Interview with: Ran David, C.E.O. of GBO International Financial Services

1. What has been happening in the Forex, Gaming and eCommerce industry over the past year in means of growth and development?
I will address each industry separately because the ecommerce industry is different than the Forex or Gaming industry. The total demand of financial services continued to rise at a moderate but steady pace. The global economic recession is not sharp and globalization continues to penetrate countries that in the past did not take part in it.   So yes, 2015 was a good year for the sector.
I must add that we can assist to Forex company only if they obtain a license. We don’t offer any services to non-regulated companies.
 
2. The Forex industry in 2015 continued to rise sharply as we saw hundreds of new brands appearing, which means that there is a big demand from players/investors for new products, new offers and fresh sites.
Each new brand needs all kind of services and resources – finance, marketing, legal, sales, security and so on, so over all, the Forex industry has substantially increased.
I meet with many executives from the Forex and Gaming industry so I get a very wide picture of what’s going on and as I understand, year 2015 is going to break records.
Ecommerce – as everybody knows, the internet/online is continuing to grow steadily every year so we see an increase in online commerce – more and more people around the globe are trying to set up their own online store. Sometimes it looks like everyone is buying and selling from each other. Most of them will need an international business bank account and legal services.
An interesting industry for us is the affiliate industry  – most of the people that run affiliate operations work under their private name rather than a company name and also use their own private bank account or eWallet, so we built a special product for them – Professional Affiliate Package – low-cost company and bank account. We were at BAC 2015 lately and it was a big success.
 
3. Regulation – there is high regulation demand from banks, merchant banks, regulators, etc. – what do you think of it?
The Forex industry is on its way to becoming regulated and requiring a license.   We have anticipated this in recent years. The unregulated operations continue to grow this year and will not disappear but it is becoming more and more difficult to run such operations.
The difficulties arise from several sources such as platform requirements, banks’ internal regulations, PSP’s (Payment Services Providers), Registrar of Companies in jurisdictions that before didn’t require a license, and more and more institutions that are involved with this world.
The Gaming industry is considered to be a regulated industry so there are no huge difficulties like there are with Forex.
There were several big issues this year that affected many companies – TBI Bank has stopped accepting and working with Forex companies; Anguilla, a very popular jurisdiction for Forex operations has tried to avoid these kinds of businesses, and many other banks have stopped accepting these companies, so overall we see that the difficulties of unregulated brokers will continue to pile up.
 
4. Why is the high-risk online business so appealing for new entrepreneurs?
The high-risk fields like Forex  are appealing because of the large profits that can be reached, the process is relatively quick and doesn’t demand huge funds. Today, if a new customer is interested in establishing a Forex company, he can do it in a relatively short time – he needs to set up a company, to open bank accounts for the company, use a white label, buy leads and traffic and theoretically he can start working in a matter of weeks.
In any field with relatively low barriers to entry and large profits in a short time, you will find very high competition.
 
5. What do you think needs to be done in order to succeed in new high-risk  brands? (multi-channels activities, social activities, google)
We see hundreds of new brands every year. Not all of them survive for second year but the ones that do survive and succeed have several common factors, like solid basis without shortcuts, massive investment in advertising and purchase of players, retention with high-level analysis and reliability with customers. Plan for long-term business.
 
6. What is your company’s uniqueness?
We offer our clients state-of-the-art banking solutions and we push all the time with any new services and develop our B2B connections. In this market, if you have winning services and excellent customer support, you can outshine the competitors.