Oren Laurent is an expert and pioneer in the binary options industry. Since starting up in 2009 with four brokers working out of an office in New York his company has expanded rapidly with offices in four countries and plans to grow even bigger. We interviewed him at his Limassol office on the island of Cyprus.
Interviewer: Oren tell me what inspired you to start Banc de Binary.
Oren Laurent: In 2009 we were a group of brokers that had taken kind of a wider scope on the financial crisis. We started looking for ways to simplify trading for the mass public. After a while it occurred to us that in 2008 the SEC listed binary options and the rest was history. We found ourselves in a position where anyone could trade. We found a financial product that we could simplify, explain to everyone and have anyone trading in a matter of minutes. That’s what brought us to the point we are today.
Interviewer: Why did you choose the binary options sector? What was special about it for you?
Oren Laurent: It’s just so simple and easy to explain to a client, and on our end, the retail end, it makes the broker’s job much easier and helps the client get into the markets at an amazing speed, and get trading right away. I’ll give you a very quick example. You’re at home watching the news and all of a sudden you see that oil is rising because of a Nigerian pipe burst, how does that affect you in any way? The average person doesn’t take that information to the markets right away and I’m not going to start explaining vanilla options to him over the phone. Here with Binary options its so simple, the same actions you do day to day, by watching the news, by turning on Bloomberg by reading the paper, are the same actions you can take online to the markets. It has simplified the entire online trading industry and has brought us to the point where we are today with over two hundred thousand client accounts.
Interviewer: Binary options are interesting in the sense that they can be very short term trades, you can have 15 minute trades, you can have sixty second trades and you see almost immediate results. How have people responded to this?
Oren Laurent: The key word I have to use here is diversification, the fact that you can trade anywhere from sixty seconds to an end of the year gives people a sense of diversity that they can trade their thoughts almost instantly on almost any trade or they can look at it long term and long term is a completely different sort of binary option, but at the same time since our platform offers both ends traders have the ability to manage the risk in that type of trading environment
Interviewer: So actually it’s simple and it’s also very flexible time wise.
Oren Laurent: It’s simple, flexible, safe and to be regulated very very soon.
Interviewer: Oh yes. Isn’t that the very latest development in the binary options industry? Regulation.
Oren Laurent: It definitely is, the latest development in the binary options industry is that we are finally going to have a regulated financial product.
Interviewer: Is that a good thing?
Oren Laurent: It’s a wonderful thing. It’s a wonderful thing both for the trader and for the company. As a trader now you’re backed by a government entity that secures your trading and your funds. At Banc de Binary, strong as we are, financially stable as we are, we can provide that kind of security for the end trader. Now with CySEC, which is the reason that we’re sitting here in Limassol today, CySEC will be our regulator in the very near future and all the critics of binary options will now have to search for something new to criticize.
Interviewer: Well they may have to change their criticisms.
Oren Laurent: They will. They’ll either have to change their criticism or find something new. But it’s okay, we’ve been dealing with it for quite a while now.
Interviewer: If a company has a license with CySEC they are passported into other European territories, is that correct?
Oren Laurent: Correct. What we do is take that same license and begin passporting it to other European countries, it’s at twenty-seven I believe today.
Interviewer: Yes
Oren Laurent: 27 countries that are in the European Union right now and we can for example passport it to the UK and receive the FSA. Again something new for the critics.
Interviewer: That’s brilliant. So binary options are really expanding as an industry.
Oren Laurent: As an industry it’s completely booming. If you looked at search results a year ago, whether in Google, Alexa and so on, and looked at hits that went to binary options sites you’d be astonished by the level of progress. The chart is literally in an upward turn and hasn’t moved in past twelve months. We do estimate that in the next 3-4 years binary options will start challenging your traditional Forex.
Interviewer: What is your vision for Banc de Binary?
Oren Laurent: Bank de Binary at the current moment is looking to expand. Whether in different countries, regions, licenses and so on, we’re looking for expansion, we currently have four offices globally and we expect by the end of 2013 to have at least six operational offices representing the Asian region and another office to represent the Middle East. At the moment we have the offices in Cyprus and New York as the main ones and London being a walk in.
Interviewer: What about education? Since Binary options are such a new field and a new industry, are you planning to help educate traders so they can understand more about how the industry works?
Oren Laurent: I have to say our main focus right now as a company to the trader on the retail end is to get traders focused, educated and to know how to trade binary options very clearly. What’s lacking in the industry right now is pure education, the same trader who is currently researching into binary options still does not have enough tools to trade properly without prior experience. Our goal is to bring anybody who wishes to trade into binary options, educate them from A-Z and move on from that point.
Interviewer: So in a sense you’re writing the book on Binary options
Oren Laurent: Well literally we have written two books so far.
Interviewer: You’ve written two books?
Oren Laurent: Yes we have written two books, one of them is available on Amazon, we’ve written two books regarding binary options. Currently our head analyst Abe Cofnas is writing a brand new book which should be released in a month and a half or so, all regarding binary options and how to trade them and of course anything that has to do with technical and fundamental analysis and how to apply it to binary options.
Interviewer: So we’ll look forward to that book release. What are Banc de Binary’s values, the way you see the company growing and developing, your company culture?
Oren Laurent: When we first started off, take into consideration we were in a very small office, just a few brokers who wanted to make some kind of a difference or some kind of an impact on the financial industry. Whereas today being over 250 brokers alone not to mention customer service and back office and so on, just brokers alone, our values have evolved within the past three years but not dramatically, meaning our first priority has always been the customer. Our customer service is paramount. Our brokers are the best in the industry by far, our recruitment process is very stringent, we know what we’re looking for, we welcome anybody who’s up to the challenge to go through our so called boot camp for brokers. And we’ve done it here in Cyprus all over again. So we’ve implemented those same values we started off with but we refined them when we came her to Cyprus.
Interviewer: Tell us your outlook for Banc de Binary in 2013.
Oren Laurent: The main outlook in 2013, first up, is to cross the half a million account mark internally. On the client’s end we would like to be regulated by at least two financial government bodies. So we’re looking forward to that and to providing traders with the utmost security and confidence in order to continue trading with us, and keeping ourselves as the financial leaders in Binary options .
Interviewer: Thank you very much Oren and all the best with everything.
Oren Laurent: Thank you very much.
The company has closed down in January 2017. Where is the money that everybody invested. I invested 250$, that is all the money I had. I was told that it was in the withdrawal process to my bank but it has been over two weeks. How do I get my money back.