How to Start a Brokerage Business.

1. 1

   Company formation, funding and a bank account

   Yours. The jurisdiction you incorporate in decides your regulatory permissions, your capital requirement and which payment providers will work with you, so it decides most of what follows. TM9 is a software development company and does not provide investment or brokerage services — the licence covers the platform, while the regulatory permissions, client relationships and funding rails stay with your business. Settle this step before you scope anything else.

2. 2

   Website

   Yours. Your site is where a prospect decides whether to open an account, so it carries the account-opening flow, your legal disclosures and your support channels. The platform sits behind it: your clients download the terminals and sign in to your servers.

3. 3

   Trading platform

   TM9. This is the step we cover. A licence ships the full set in every tier: the Client Mobile, Web and Client Desktop terminals your traders use, the Manager Terminal your desk works from, the Administrator Terminal your platform team configures, and the Trade, History, Access and Backup servers underneath. Tiers differ in scale rather than capability, so a small brokerage and a large one run the same product and give clients the same experience. See how licensing works.

4. 4

   Hosting and infrastructure

   Yours, scoped with us. Where the servers run, and how close they sit to your liquidity, is part of your rollout plan rather than a line in a price list — which is why it is one of the things we go through on a short call before pricing. The server roles themselves are included: one Trade Server in Standard and Business, four in Express, with Access, History and Backup in every tier.

5. 5

   Liquidity

   Yours, connected through us. You choose and contract your own liquidity providers. The connection into the platform is a gateway, and gateways are the one thing not bundled into a tier — they are added upon order, in Standard, Business and Express alike, because no two brokers need the same set.

6. 6

   CRM and client onboarding

   Yours. Know-your-customer checks, document collection and your sales pipeline live in your CRM, not in the trading platform. The Manager Terminal is where your desk watches flow and manages client accounts once those accounts exist; the commercial funnel in front of it is yours to build.

7. 7

   Payment service providers

   Yours. Your PSPs and banking partners hold client money and move it — TM9 does not. What the platform contributes is the client-side experience around it: see instant deposits and withdrawals for how funding appears to a trader, and funding an account for the trader-facing version of the same flow.

8. 8

   Marketing and analytics

   Yours. Worth knowing before you write the copy: the questions that decide a sale are usually the same four. Can I trade currencies, stocks and futures in one account? Is there a mobile app that does everything the desktop does? Can I follow someone else's trades while I learn? Can I automate my strategy? A multi-asset platform with mobile and web terminals, built-in copy trading and a full algorithmic trading environment answers all four without a caveat, which shortens sales conversations and reduces support load later.

9. 9

   Staffing

   Yours. Three groups touch the platform and they need different seats, which is why they get different terminals: your desk works in the Manager Terminal, your platform team in the Administrator Terminal, and your clients in the three client terminals. Keeping them separate means desk staff and traders never see controls they should not touch. Bring operations and support into the platform decision rather than treating it as a purely technical one — they are the ones who live in it daily.

10. 10

    Testing, training and going live

    Shared. Rehearse on demo accounts before a single real account opens: see demo versus real accounts for what does and does not carry over. Train the desk in the Manager Terminal and the platform team in the Administrator Terminal while the environment is still empty. If you are moving from another platform rather than starting cold, switching to TM9 covers that path instead.

Or jump to the TM9 Guides and Platform Guide hubs, or the home page.