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to each group. We are looking to expand beyond the commercial and corporate marketplace to also serve the larger financial institutions that are actively trading FX. We see opportunities in this segment to provide services around execution that will make it a very valuable tool for the client, in addition to very solid and fair pricing. We will look to provide rich features in addition to the ability to just pull the trigger on a trade.”
Godfrey believes that one-size does not fit all across clients with different reasons for executing an FX contract and will be designing the platform to suit the specific client segment, with further customisation available. “Our best ideas always come from listening to our customers”, says Godfrey.
Customer service
Stamos Fokianos, global head, e-FX Trading, at RBC Capital Markets agrees that price discovery and instant execution are no longer differentiators, they are prerequisites, and as the industry waits to see how the future regulations will affect the transaction execution and settlement, one of the primary differentiators is customer service. “Clients are not happy with problems just being resolved quickly, they expect not to have problems in the first place. Banks are therefore investing in system monitoring dashboards which warn about a problem being gradually developed (for example, the CPU usage in a particular server), as well as well trained technical staff that appreciate not just the complex IT issues involved in resolving a production problem, but also the financial impact for a modern FX business and its clients being temporarily offline,” he says.
Furthermore, he says these client expectations multiply in the API product offering (an extension of the GUI single bank platform using direct connectivity), where speed and volume are of the essence for accurate trading and order execution. APIs linked to price aggregated OMSs (Order Management Systems) cannot afford to fail in their decision making and subsequent order allocation and there are multiple points of failure that need to be managed in order for this business to be reliably delivered.
Te standard of e-FX platforms in the market today, whether single bank or multi bank, is so high that offering good pricing and execution is not enough to compete with the plethora of client options.
90 | october 2011 e-FOREX
Fokianos says RBC aims to offer a comprehensive service that involves multi-asset trading, research and other value-add tools such as: an online FX Forward ‘Maturity Diary’, a real-time’ Trading Blotter and cash management systems integration enabling clients subscribing to RBC’s Cash Management System, RBC Express Clients to link their trades on RBCDX with an outgoing wire payment.
Fokianos adds: “We are also providing the ability for clients to customise the web-based application so that it fits in to the way they operate. We need to keep in mind that our product is not a means to itself but one of the many tools that our clients need to use daily to manage their daily business. Customisation should not be limited to layout rather there should also be emphasis on usability.”
RBC’s FX orders module offers the ability to view orders in a ‘client perspective’ or ‘bank perspective’. Again the goal is not to create a ‘one size fits all’ rather to create a system that is completely flexible to match all trading styles.
Fokianos adds that the customisation of a webpage is now an expectation by every internet user, and from an operational perspective, it is also essential to process orders in a more customised way; clients provide significant business opportunities through linked and other types of orders that go beyond the simple stop loss or take profit arrangement. RBC is actively involved in discussions with regulators and market infrastructures about the
different ways that FX might evolve, and all its FX product development is done in such a way that can be quickly and easily adapted to any new regulatory requirements Te bank’s electronic pricing and execution processes, whether through multibank or single bank platforms, are already offering competitive and accurate market pricing and can be routed for settlement to central repositories or any other mechanism that will be defined in the future.
New GUI technology
For Fokianos, the most important element of the new GUI technology is the ability to size windows in exactly the way you need them, without compromising the presentation of the information within that window. Resizing windows and being able to detach them from the central applications, allows clients to create their own desktop and optimise their
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