Welcome to TKA

We pride ourselves on creating an integrated machine for the trading industry, where the trading desks component parts work both in unison and in harmony.

We specialize in providing effective trading systems to the financial industry internationally, as well as a range of trading desks solutions that make both a price and performance difference to our trading clients. If you are a trader, broker, administrator, manager, engineer or technician; then TKA can make a positive difference to your operation, by reducing your bottom line costs and improving your overall trading efficiency. TKA is at your disposal when it comes to improving the overall performance of your dealing room.

About Us

TKA (Thomson Krummeck and Associates) have been providing products and services to the financial dealing community for over twenty years.

These products and services are built on a vast base of underlying experience gained from a wide array of market and technical vendors, such as Refinitiv and Bloomberg, as well as working with international Market Data inventory specialists like ScreenTRG and AFO.

Despite many competing vendors in the market, the constantly shifting nature of financial markets means our clients' needs constantly shift. With client concerns ranging from non-availability of specific products or services, to predatory vendor pricing or slipshod implementation, TKA has developed and sourced a range of products for dealing rooms based specifically on the unmet requirements of traders and brokers in the financial markets..

TKA has also contributed to the overall operation of specific financial market areas per se. The South African Gilt Market is based on technical products TKA developed back in 1993. In the past, our contributions products have ensured level playing fields for information vendors such as Reuters, Telerate, Bloomberg and I-Net/Bridge.

The above, complemented with a thorough understanding of turrets, voice and data connectivity systems, custom dealing keyboards, market data and real-time computer systems makes TKA your ideal dealing room technology partner.

In 2019, TKA underwent a change in ownership following the retirement of the founding members, Bill Thomson and Wolly Krummeck. TKA remains a family run business under the leadership of Kelvin Thomson, we proudly continue the spirit of technical innovation and solution-driven thinking that has been critical to the continued growth of this small but dynamic tech team.

Consulting Services

Component selection must both match the client's business needs and be able to readily integrate into the dealing room system.

We understand the myriad of components and services that make up a dealing room. Apart from the dealer 'upfront' components like dealer boards, information vendor data and services, dealer workstations etc., we also understand the 'behind' the scenes components - like dealing desks, power and air conditioning, open voice telephony, networking etc.

We have been involved in numerous successes and have witnessed some meaningful DIY dealing room failures. The maxim of buying the most expensive and hoping for the best does not necessarily hold true in the financial trading arena. It's rather a matter of getting the best equipment at the best possible rate, to ensure that your processes run smoothly.

If your dealing room is not living up to perceived expectations, or is operating at a higher cost than you were hoping for – we would love the opportunity to assist you in addressing those challenges..t may be just a single 'cog' in the operation of your dealing room that keeps on getting jammed - and no matter what remedial action is taken, the jam keeps on recurring. It is cases like this that TKA love remedying - and normally the remedy is in orders of magnitude less expensive than the alternatives proposed by various vendors. We pride ourselves on finding solutions for your business that are cost effective.

Alternatively, it may be just a single 'cog' in the operation of your dealing room that keeps on getting jammed - and no matter what remedial action is taken the jam keeps on occurring. It is cases like this that TKA love remedying - and normally the remedy is in orders of magnitude less expensive than the alternatives proposed by various vendors.

Whether you are building a new dealing room or just a little uncomfortable with certain aspects of the operation of your existing dealing room, TKA can be of assistance - we are just a phone call away.

Private Wires

Private Wires, broker lines, Hoot 'n Holler, you name it… We've heard them all.

Since the early 2000's, TKA has pioneered the provision of local Private Wires in South Africa, following Telkom discontinuing their service. The biggest challenge was the comparatively small number of required lines, compared to other markets such as the UK. This made creating a cost-effective, market-wide, Private Wire solution with the available network options that could scale effectively, a uniquely South African engineering challenge.

TKA not only met that challenge, but are now the only provider of domestic, reliable Private Wires for traders and brokers to work efficiently.

In 2020, TKA partnered with Flexenet in the UK to offer international Private Wires to South African clients. With better pricing, superior service, and dedicated local support compared to other international suppliers, we are one-step ahead of the game.

2021 has seen TKA not resting on their laurels in the slightest. We are proud to announce a full core network overhaul, as well as offering significant service improvements including client-monitoring, multi-site redundancies as well as SLA's for clients that want to ensure that their ability to keep trading in adverse conditions is greatly improved.

Advantages of TKA VoiceNet Private Wires:

Presence in over 25 South African Banks and Inter-Dealer Brokers (IDB's) as well as the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).
Ability to provide Private Wires to over 520 international locations in under 24 hours if already on-net with TKA. Including Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, and Seoul.
Default site deployment uses at least 2 diverse connectivity vendors in an HA configuration to minimise downtime. No other Private Wire supplier in SA can do this for your team.
Local network core and PoP (point of presence). All other Private Wire providers will route voice traffic through an international PoP, introducing unnecessary risk and latency into all communication.
Dedicated local support. TKA's team of engineers are personally available virtually around the clock for any support queries. We also carry all private wire spares and supplies needed. No call centres or dead-ends when you need to find critical support in an outage.
We offer various, flexible SLA options designed to suit your business. Even if your organisation is the B-Side to all Private Wires; we can and have worked with voice teams to ensure reliable service provision on their terms. Gone are the days of Private Wires being "someone else's problem". We gladly work with client voice teams to ensure proactive solutions demanded by modern business for maximum uptime.
Multi-Site redundancies. We support multiple options to provide multi-site redundant infrastructure to accommodate almost any type of disaster recovery solution.
Active monitoring. We actively monitor all devices, links and services across our network. We will tell you about issues before your traders even know there is one, and actively manage resolutions and communications around faults. The true value of our service is not what happens when all runs smoothly ‐ but how we work to resolve issues and faults when they arise.
Client-side monitoring and automated alerts. We are proud to announce that we have recently launched our new client-side monitoring and automated alerts service, where clients will be able to monitor their service through an application, as well as receive alerts in real-time should there be an issue with your VoiceNet private wires.

Turrets and voice Recording

TKA is proud to announce that we now offer a fully managed, outsourced turret solution with voice recording options.

Please contact us with any questions you may have with regards to turrets. We cater for small sites with a single turret and single line all the way up to multi-site deployments with dozens of lines and a full voice recording and archiving solution.

TKA Turret Solution Includes:

Options of a premium hard or soft professional voice trading turret with various configuration, speaker and connection options.
Full voice recording options. We can offer cloud-based or on-premise voice recording solutions.
Fully managed and outsourced turret service. Don't want to pay over millions of Rands for a new dealer board system or pay exorbitant SLA fees? Put that money to better use elsewhere and TKA will work with you to create the ideal service that works for you, at an affordable monthly cost.
Disaster recovery planning service. No one saw Covid coming. Everyone had plans to create off-site disaster recovery solutions, but no one factored in working from home and social distancing. We can assist organisations of any size with an affordable disaster recovery turret solution. Instead of purchasing an entire separate system that might not even be used ‐ TKA will work with your disaster recovery strategy team to create a low cost, soft turret solution that will cost a fraction of a full, dedicated off-site turret system. For a monthly retainer ‐ we will create and maintain a bespoke, full disaster recovery solution with voice recording. This cost will include regular practice invocations and scenario planning updates. Full billing for the solution will only start if and when an actual disaster recovery scenario is invoked. Speak to us today and we will gladly assist.
Turret solutions available throughout Sub-Saharan African and Mauritius.