The
prediction markets platform Kalshi has recruited Andy Ross, the former head of
prime brokerage at Standard Chartered, to lead its institutional business.
Ross is set
to officially begin the role in late March after a period of gardening leave
following his departure from StanChart late last year. The hire comes as Kalshi
pushes to move beyond its retail roots and carve out a meaningful position with
hedge funds, asset managers, and other large financial institutions.
Ross Brings Deep
Derivatives Pedigree
Ross spent
over 25 years in London’s financial markets. Before Standard Chartered, where
he served as global head of prime brokerage from 2022 until late 2025, he was
CEO of CurveGlobal, the interest rate derivatives platform backed by London
Stock Exchange Group and a consortium of banks including Goldman Sachs, J.P.
Morgan, and Barclays.
Prior to
that, he spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley, finishing as European head of
over-the-counter clearing.
Writing on
LinkedIn, Ross framed the move as a conviction bet on prediction markets as a
superior risk management tool.
He pointed
to a stark example: “In 2016, Wall Street told clients to short the
S&P as a Trump hedge. Trump won. The S&P went up. Ouch. The hedges
didn’t work.” He described Kalshi as having built “a regulated US
platform with real liquidity, masses of interesting data, serious ambition, and
a rapidly growing institutional client base,” adding that he believes
prediction markets represent “the single most important disruptive force
in financial markets since the development of the eurodollar future.”
Tradeweb Deal Signals a
Broader Shift
The
appointment builds on Kalshi’s deal with Tradeweb Markets, announced last week,
in which the bond-trading giant made a minority investment in Kalshi and agreed
to integrate its prediction market data into Tradeweb’s platform, which serves
over 3,000 institutional clients globally.
Tradeweb
CEO Billy Hult said that “prediction markets are increasingly
becoming a key part of the trading landscape, and have the potential to become
an indicator for institutions to dynamically assess macro risk and allocate
capital more effectively.”
The two
companies also plan to build an institutional-focused portal for trading event
contracts tied to macroeconomic releases, Federal Reserve decisions, and major
policy outcomes – with Tradeweb serving as the front-end interface.
Growing Fast, but Not
Without Friction
Kalshi’s
institutional ambitions come as the broader prediction markets sector is
experiencing explosive growth. The platform processed roughly $23.8 billion in
trading volume in 2025, up more than 1,100% year-over-year, according to
industry data. Earlier this year, prediction
markets hit a record $702 million in daily trading volume, even as state regulators across
the US continued challenging the legality of certain event contracts.
That
regulatory environment remains unsettled. A Massachusetts court ruling earlier
this year threatened to block Kalshi’s sports contracts, even as the platform
set an all-time
revenue record of $2.7 million in fees in a single week. Kalshi has also faced
lawsuits alongside Robinhood over contracts critics argue resemble sports
betting.
Institutional Moment
“Already Here”
Ross isn’t
the only recent hire signaling Kalshi’s direction. Last year, the company brought on a
23-year-old crypto influencer to head its digital asset expansion, reflecting a strategy of building
different audience bases in parallel. The Ross appointment, however, targets a
very different constituency – one that moves larger sums and demands regulated,
auditable infrastructure.
Tarek
Mansour, Kalshi’s co-founder and CEO, has argued that institutional adoption
now has the building blocks it needs. As FinanceMagnates.com
reported in January,
Mansour believes prediction markets could ultimately create a new professional
category for traders, not unlike the gig economy jobs created by Uber and
Instagram.
Meanwhile,
industry observers have noted that so-called “pro-tail
traders” are already pushing prediction market infrastructure toward execution tools that
look increasingly like traditional trading screens, a shift that makes a
seasoned derivatives executive like Ross a natural fit for Kalshi’s next
chapter.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
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