FX Markets

Foreign exchange is one of the few areas that excelled in the last year. Sudden strong client demand, combined with past underinvestment in FX technology, means that many banks are currently involved in an arms race to upgrade their FX infrastructure and provide better service to their clients. 

In this new front in electronic trading wars, Catalyst is poised as a specialist consulting company that provides independent expert advice, strategic direction and change on front office electronic trading environments, primarily FX and Rates.

Our centers of competence are as follows:

• Manage Latency and Co-Location and Proximity Hosting strategies
• Define future state of ecommerce architecture
• Align market expansion strategy with the technology goals, development processes and methodology, technical architecture, and investment
• Align ecommerce strategy with market standards/ market forces and direction
• Implementation of market leading vendor packages such as Apama, Streambase, Murex, Flex trade, Traiana
• Design, deliver, implement proprietary builds such as single dealer online FX trading systems, deal capture systems and FX order management systems and sales and traders tools (sales margin, sales and trading dashboard, client and market intelligence tools)
• Develop white label and PB strategies
• 3rd party vendor systems solutions

If you are interested please read contact us to discuss how we can help.

Case Studies

Co-Location And Proximity Hosting Strategy:

Problem: A large investment bank was looking to reduce latency from the point when the price left the investment bank, through the ECN to the point where it reaches the end client as this was leading to high rejection rates and slippage.  As part of the initiative the bank was also looking to reduce its rather significant connectivity bill.

Solution: Catalyst created and implemented a co-location and proximity hosting landscape for the bank to ensure the fastest guaranteed connection to the various matching engines spread globally along with their clients’ trading boxes.  This solution led to a much reduced annual connectivity fee.

Catalyst also partnered with the investment bank and the ECN to implement a solution to allow for real-time tracking of latency between the investment bank and the ECN.

Future State Architecture For FX Single Dealer Platform:

Problem: An investment bank was initiating a major programme of delivering new services and products to their single dealer platform for FX.  To succeed the bank needed to ensure that the architecture was scalable and Catalyst was engaged to perform a review of the existing architecture and to produce a future state architecture.

Solution: Catalyst mapped the existing architecture within the FX house after which the business drivers and vision were analysed.  Based on these findings Catalyst led the client through a process to define the future state technical architecture to serve the business for the next five to seven years.


Development Methodology And Technical Architecture Review For FX And Rates Single Dealer Platform:

Problem: In order to achieve their FX and Rates business and technology objectives, Catalyst was engaged by a large US bank to review the delivery process, methodologies, technical architecture and technical environments for their existing electronic trading system to provide a series of short, medium and long term recommendations.

Solution: The entire development process was examined from business engagement through testing and the post production stage along with a review of the technical architecture and the various environments and their support. The engagement yielded a number of recommendations which were then implemented by Catalyst for the bank.

Designed And Programme Managed the Development Of An Order Management System (OMS) For A Large European Bank

Problem: The bank had been using a combination of spreadsheets and non scalable applications for managing their global FX order book which was proving to be a great limitation of their ability to grow the business and make it 24/7.

Solution: Catalyst programme managed the design, development, implementation, integration and roll-out of a new database driven OMS which was first rolled out to the traders and sales people globally, then the partner banks were onboarded followed by clients. Catalyst provided the programme manager, business analysts and testing manager and used the banks’ resources to develop the application.

Designed A FX White Label Strategy For A Large British Bank

Problem: After years of acquiring subsidiary banks over the years, this British bank was looking to implement a global FX electronic trading infrastructure while still maintaining local relationships and brand loyalty

Solution: Catalyst designed a white label solution using the existing electronic trading infrastructure at the bank and managed the roll-out to their private banking subsidiaries.  In addition, the white label product could also be offered to the banks’ downstream partner banks along with a customised suite of automated tools and services.

Designed A Global FX And Money Market Sales Margin Strategy And Application For A Large British Bank

Problem: After struggling with managing sales margins across numerous spreadsheets and CRM front-ends Catalyst was engaged to design and programme manage the delivery of a global sales margin application.

Solution: Catalyst delivered a flexible global FX sales margin application that could be customised across the different FX Cash products – Spot, Outrights, Swaps and Time Options, by amount, by tenor, by platform the request was coming from and by the user making the request.  The application was developed and rolled out with direct impact on FX sales revenues and lead to an increase in the number of customers being onboarded to trade electronically.