NEW YORK, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — MCAP Inc. (OTC: MCAP), today announced the growing institutional adoption and continued expansion of aRFQ™, an automated execution protocol available on QwickRoute, the auction-based execution and market data platform operated by its wholly owned broker-dealer subsidiary, MCAP LLC. After more than two years of live institutional operation, aRFQ™ has become a proven, scalable execution protocol — now used by over 50 institutional clients and engaging 15 liquidity providers — with growing adoption across the electronic ETF execution landscape.
Platform performance data underscores the protocol’s effectiveness: in Q4 2025, over 92% of aRFQ™ executions priced at or inside the NBBO with near-zero market impact, auctions completed in under 1.9 seconds on average, and an average of 4.6 dealers quoted on every order — generating over 32 times the liquidity available at the lit NBBO.
“Competition has always been central to best execution,” said Aaron Kehoe, Head of QwickRoute. “With aRFQ™, we’ve taken the core principles of competitive auction-based execution and embedded them directly into electronic trading workflows — automated, repeatable, and designed to deliver consistent price discovery across all order sizes without adding operational complexity.”
As ETF trading volumes and algorithmic order flow continue to accelerate, execution desks face a structural tradeoff: competitive, multi-dealer liquidity has historically required stepping outside the electronic workflow through manual RFQ processes, while IOI-based venues that remain in the execution stack offer only indicative pricing that is not immediately actionable. aRFQ™ was designed to eliminate that tradeoff — delivering firm, competitive auction liquidity as a native destination within the electronic execution workflow.
Unlike traditional RFQ processes that require traders to step outside their electronic workflow or IOI-based interactions that rely on indicative pricing, aRFQ™ operates as a fully automated execution protocol accessible directly from within the smart order router — sitting alongside exchanges, dark pools, and other electronic venues as a destination in the existing routing table. Because aRFQ™ sits natively in the SOR, it scales across order sizes through a single broker-dealer connection with no changes to existing OMS infrastructure or algo logic.
See how the aRFQ™ execution protocol works here.
About QwickRoute: QwickRoute is an auction-based execution and market data platform operated by MCAP LLC, a wholly owned broker–dealer subsidiary of MCAP Inc. The platform provides institutional clients with access to competitive, multi-dealer auction liquidity through a single broker-dealer connection — currently serving the ETF market, with expansion into additional asset classes planned. QwickRoute generates a proprietary dataset of auction dynamics, execution quality metrics, and liquidity provider behavior, delivering actionable market intelligence alongside best-in-class execution.
About MCAP Inc.: MCAP Inc. is a U.S.-based public holding company that owns subsidiaries involved in securities trading and financial technology. MCAP Inc. owns, develops, and invests in the electronic market making and execution sector, securities trading technologies, and algo execution platforms. All securities activities are conducted through its wholly owned subsidiary MCAP LLC, a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC.
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SOURCE MCAP Inc.
