"The times they are changing"

It is difficult to overstate how important the implementation of regulations, such as Dodd-Frank or MiFID II rules, has been to the development of electronic workflow adoption across the OTC universe. Meanwhile, over the last year, we have seen an acceleration in the digitisation of workflow, emphasising the levels of remote working and the need to replace email in many workflows.

Within voice- or chat-driven pre-trade negotiation and/or post-trade confirmation, market participants are adopting new models to harness the changing infrastructure while preserving the advantages of traditional workflow in markets, particularly where liquidity is fragmented and questioned. However, despite changes in regulation and improvements in electronic trading, there remains a proliferation of voice- and chat-based communication.

Enhanced OTC price distribution & workflow 

Therefore, the ability to preserve key elements of the OTC workflow processes, while leveraging the benefits of electronic price and risk formation, is a key advantage for market participants looking to manage negotiation and exposure in the new world. Meanwhile, challenges around end-to-end compliance will remain a primary consideration when weighing any change to any manual and opaque workflow processes.

Consequently, the combination of Symphony and ipushpull provides a unified productivity layer combining chat and data to form new structured data-driven workflows. Where Symphony provides real-time chat, ipushpull provides real-time data. Using ipushpull you can share data between Symphony and many other interoperable applications, platforms, or databases. Moreover, by unbundling and re-bundling workflows that live in Excel spreadsheets, emails, and file shares into this new way of working, ipushpull can provide a rich canvas inside Symphony that mixes together the best parts of web and collaboration tools into new structured workflows. 

Last year NatWest Markets began to use ipushpull and Symphony and has been building bots on the messaging platform for automating functions including order routing, and sending prices to clients. Clients now contact sales, whilst talking to the client, sales can connect to ipushpull and share live data via Symphony or a web page which requires no installation for the client and is quick and easy to deploy.  

As a result, it has become much easier and quicker for the NatWest Markets sales team to distribute axes as they are streaming in real time.

While BNP are using ipushpull and Symphony to digitise pre-trade workflow for non-standard complex trades with their buy-side clients.

These use cases are merely a drop in the ocean when compared to the potential to digitise and automate the vast amount of manual processes across the front, middle and back office, most notably in OTC markets.

Standardisation of data and low code workflow

By taking the heavy lifting away from robotic tasks, such as copy and paste, rekeying of data etc; employees can free up time for more value-added tasks such as cultivating relationships, generating ideas and creating revenue. Furthermore, by developing standardised syntax participants can rely on a set format and build technology to use those messages. This also helps automate repetitive processes to avoid failures. This could be something as simple as recognising a pricing request and pushing notifications out to the involved parties.

This is tailor-made for markets that are less liquid or have unique pockets of liquidity and is adaptable to strategy and block-size trades that could be managed during a trading session. Another benefit to this richer data source (management information around response times and competitiveness of quotes) is to help brokers and market participants access alternative data that can help improve relationship management and manage expectations. There is a blurred boundary between messaging and applications, so ensuring all data sits within the communication space provides real transformative improvements combining real-time data sharing and no-code workflow tools and bots.

ipushpull, delivering the right data, to the right place at the right time, to enable users to collaborate and share insight. For more information, head over to the Symphony ipushpull page. Did you miss our webinar with Symphony?