Investment bank ABN Amro is to launch a hosted electronic
trading service for mid-tier banks.The service, accessed via a web portal, allows banks to offer
clients electronic trading services in foreign currencies branded
as their own service.
The worldwide launch of the service, due in the last quarter of
this year, is a success story for ABN’s IT department which,
initially, developed the technology for internal use.
“This is for large institutions and mid-tier banks who want to
offer their customers foreign exchange services without investing
huge amounts of money [in developing electronic trading
platforms],” said Steven Metzler, head of global foreign exchange
non-traditional products at ABN Amro.
Metzler estimated that it would cost a firm millions of pounds
to develop an electronic foreign exchange trading service.
ABN offers two foreign trading services; a “streaming” system,
allowing customers to receive real time quotes and then trade them,
and a request for quotes system (RFQ), which can be used for less
commonly traded currency pairs.
ABN’s trading services are based on a mixture of off-the-shelf
software, bespoke messaging product and workflow systems.
Consultancy Stentra helped ABN develop the services, although ABN
owns all the intellectual property rights and any profits from
sales of the technology.