The story of Deriv starts in 1999. Regent Markets Group, the founding company, was established with a mission to make online trading accessible to the masses. The Group has since rebranded and evolved (from Regent Markets to Binary.com and now it’s called Deriv.com), but its founding mission remains unchanged. In this interview, Jean-Yves Sireau, CEO Deriv.com, talks about the original source of inspiration for starting the company, what’s the meaning behind the brand name and what are the next steps in the evolution of the brand.

What is the story behind Deriv.com?

Deriv had its beginnings in 1999. In those days, derivative products were only traded by the big banks and hedge fund managers, and they were doing so in large quantities. I realised there was no opportunity at the time for retail investors to invest in the simplest of all derivatives contracts — the fixed-odds trade. So, we created the systems, methods, and algorithms for a fixed-odds trading platform for retail investors. We essentially opened up the opportunity for ordinary investors to make small trade, and we became one of the world’s first companies to do so.

For those who don’t know Deriv.com yet, what does your company exactly do?

We provide an online trading space that is accessible to anyone who wants to trade. Through our four trading platforms, multiple trade types, 24/7 service, and the various strategies they can apply, our clients have the flexibility and control to trade whenever they want, whatever they want, and however they want.

Your company was named Binary up until recently, what brought the rebrand about? What is going to happen to Binary.com now?

From the very beginning, the company has always been about innovation. Now that we’ve stepped into our third decade of operations in 2020, it’s just time for us to renew our commitment to making online trading accessible to everyone. The roll-out of Deriv.com is inspired by our clients and motivated by our desire to continue listening and responding to them to improve their experience in our trading space.

Binary.com has been a big part of our company, and it laid the foundation for who and where we are today. It will eventually be phased out, but we’ve also taken the best lessons from Binary.com and focused them on developing Deriv.com.

How did you choose the name Deriv?

The name Binary.com perfectly reflected where we were some years ago. The name helped to create the awareness needed for the products and services we were offering at the time. Since then, we’ve been growing and improving ourselves, strengthening our presence in the market. As we progressed to improve our products and services with a wider range of options for clients to trade, as well as upgrade the trading experience, we needed a name that was reflective of how the company has evolved.

Of course, the name Deriv refers to derivatives, indicating the wider range of products, services, and features that we are now offering. But the name Deriv is also apt in expressing the growth stage that the company’s at right now — we’re a dynamic company that’s not afraid to innovate and transform ourselves. It is expressive of our drive to move the company forward and build a healthy, positive community of well-informed traders.

At what point in your rebranding strategy did you acquire the domain name Deriv.com? Why did you pick that one exactly?

We picked the Deriv.com domain name in the early days of the rebranding journey. The name is short, memorable, and significant to our clients.

We chose to maintain the .com extension because it was already familiar to our Binary.com clients. Moreover, the popularity of .coms reflect a strong, credible, and well-established presence.

What would your advice be to any business owners thinking about rebranding? What’s the toughest part about it and how did you overcome it?

For any company that’s thinking about rebranding, know that change is challenging for everyone, and most people resist it. But if that change is for the better, stick with it. It helps to come from a perspective of genuinely wanting to solve problems for the good of everyone.

Think about how to communicate this transition to your clients, how to ensure a smooth transition for them, and how to reward them for following you on this journey.

The entire process can be smooth if you get the early buy-in from your internal stakeholders, namely your board members, your suppliers, and your employees. Get that right first, and the rest will fall into place.

How do you keep your brand consistent across different channels online and offline? Does your domain name play a role in that process?

We have various teams working on different aspects of the rebranding, and so consistency in messaging is crucial. To pull the branding together, we are guided by a brand book that details out our target audience, our brand value, our brand promise, the tone we are going for, and so forth.

At this initial stage of the rebranding, we are trying to promote the new domain name, so naturally, we try to have as many mentions of the domain name as possible to create that familiarity across all channels.

What do you do to make sure your marketing is effective?

To make sure our marketing is effective, we are guided by the pillars that drive our company forward since Day 1, which are our focus on technology, customer experience, branding, and expansion.

For example, we’re very concerned about maintaining the positive reputation of our company in the market. As legitimate brokers, we want to protect our track record by operating under strict regulatory compliance. You’ll see that we implement audits and have internal processes in place that enable us to assess and manage risks to the company.

Another aspect that strengthens our marketing efforts is the technology behind our innovative product range. We are among the first trading service providers to make our front-end applications open-source, allowing other developers to review or adapt our front-end code.

Customer experience is a huge deal to us. Just the way we interact and respond to our clients and make ourselves available 24/7 to support them is a great way for us to consistently listen and improve what we offer to our clients.

This ties back to our expansion efforts, which includes our initiative to actively engage with our clients and build a community of traders. By nurturing this relationship with clients, they eventually become our champions.

By building a strong foundation based on these four aspects, we’ve been able to let our company, our customers, and our products and services speak for themselves.

What would your advice be to entrepreneurs who are just starting out, in general, and when it comes to branding and naming?

In our case and particularly for this industry, reputation and branding is key. It’s something to think about even before you begin your business operations and build on from that day onwards. I’d say that it starts out with the name you choose to be known as, too.

It’s not always easy, but once you’ve established yourself as a business with integrity, it creates trust, credibility, and confidence across the board and into the future.

Where do you see your business in the future and how does your brand name fit into that vision?

As I always say, the future is hard to predict, but you always need to build for the future. The company has been around since 1999 and we’ve always evolved to reflect the current times, market trends, client preferences, new opportunities, and so forth.

For us, the future remains full of opportunities, but the three key areas we are focussing on now are open-source technology, APIs, and algorithmic trading. Our explorations in these areas will remain firmly tied to the long-term strategies we’ve determined, namely technology, customer experience, branding, and expansion.

I think the brand name we’ve chosen — Deriv — gives us the room and opportunity to manage our future position better in the marketplace.