Theprediction markets platform Kalshi has recruited Andy Ross, the former head ofprime brokerage at Standard Chartered, to lead its institutional business.Ross is setto officially begin the role in late March after a period of gardening leavefollowing his departure from StanChart late last year. The hire comes as Kalshipushes to move beyond its retail roots and carve out a meaningful position withhedge funds, asset managers, and other large financial institutions.Ross Brings DeepDerivatives PedigreeRoss spentover 25 years in London's financial markets. Before Standard Chartered, wherehe served as global head of prime brokerage from 2022 until late 2025, he wasCEO of CurveGlobal, the interest rate derivatives platform backed by LondonStock Exchange Group and a consortium of banks including Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan, and Barclays. Prior tothat, he spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley, finishing as European head ofover-the-counter clearing.Writing onLinkedIn, Ross framed the move as a conviction bet on prediction markets as asuperior risk management tool. He pointedto a stark example: "In 2016, Wall Street told clients to short theS&P as a Trump hedge. Trump won. The S&P went up. Ouch. The hedgesdidn't work." He described Kalshi as having built "a regulated USplatform with real liquidity, masses of interesting data, serious ambition, anda rapidly growing institutional client base," adding that he believesprediction markets represent "the single most important disruptive forcein financial markets since the development of the eurodollar future."Tradeweb Deal Signals aBroader ShiftTheappointment builds on Kalshi's deal with Tradeweb Markets, announced last week,in which the bond-trading giant made a minority investment in Kalshi and agreedto integrate its prediction market data into Tradeweb's platform, which servesover 3,000 institutional clients globally. TradewebCEO Billy Hult said that "prediction markets are increasinglybecoming a key part of the trading landscape, and have the potential to becomean indicator for institutions to dynamically assess macro risk and allocatecapital more effectively."The twocompanies also plan to build an institutional-focused portal for trading eventcontracts tied to macroeconomic releases, Federal Reserve decisions, and majorpolicy outcomes - with Tradeweb serving as the front-end interface.Growing Fast, but NotWithout FrictionKalshi'sinstitutional ambitions come as the broader prediction markets sector isexperiencing explosive growth. The platform processed roughly $23.8 billion intrading volume in 2025, up more than 1,100% year-over-year, according toindustry data. Earlier this year, predictionmarkets hit a record $702 million in daily trading volume, even as state regulators acrossthe US continued challenging the legality of certain event contracts.Thatregulatory environment remains unsettled. A Massachusetts court ruling earlierthis year threatened to block Kalshi's sports contracts, even as the platformset an all-timerevenue record of $2.7 million in fees in a single week. Kalshi has also facedlawsuits alongside Robinhood over contracts critics argue resemble sportsbetting.Institutional Moment"Already Here"Ross isn'tthe only recent hire signaling Kalshi's direction. Last year, the company brought on a23-year-old crypto influencer to head its digital asset expansion, reflecting a strategy of buildingdifferent audience bases in parallel. The Ross appointment, however, targets avery different constituency - one that moves larger sums and demands regulated,auditable infrastructure.TarekMansour, Kalshi's co-founder and CEO, has argued that institutional adoptionnow has the building blocks it needs. As FinanceMagnates.comreported in January,Mansour believes prediction markets could ultimately create a new professionalcategory for traders, not unlike the gig economy jobs created by Uber andInstagram. Meanwhile,industry observers have noted that so-called "pro-tailtraders" are already pushing prediction market infrastructure toward execution tools thatlook increasingly like traditional trading screens, a shift that makes aseasoned derivatives executive like Ross a natural fit for Kalshi's nextchapter.This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.