Interdealer broker bets on BT for infrastructure

Aiming to allow the leading provider of market infrastructure to cash in from advanced communications regardless of traders’ locations, BT has announced a seven-year contract with TP ICAP to provide its 700-strong broker team in London with a secure, software-based platform and applications featuring remote working capabilities.

Part of the Pullett Prebon Group, TP ICAP brings together buyers and sellers in global capital, energy and commodities markets. It is the world’s largest wholesale market intermediary, with a portfolio of trusted businesses that provide broking services, data and analytics and market intelligence to clients around the world. It operates from offices in 31 countries, supporting award-winning brokers with market-leading technology.

In its contract with TP ICAP, the telco will be supplying BT Trading, its unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platform, which it said has been engineered specifically for the high-performance real-time trading, regulatory and security needs of the global capital markets.

It can be accessed by brokers working remotely and is integrated with unified communications platforms from Microsoft and Cisco. It also includes a suite of applications and devices supported by systems either hosted by customers in their own datacentres, by BT or in the public cloud.

BT is also deploying its BT Trading soft turret app which replicates on a mobile device or PC the hardware turrets, also known as dealer boards, used by brokers on trading floors. Such functionality is attributed with enhancing business resilience by ensuring brokers can communicate with customers and have access to markets just as if they were in the office.

To enable companies to meet their compliance obligations for service availability and call recording, BT Trading automation is also said to be able to assure the operational functionality of voice recording and verify enforcement of recording policies. If there is a problem with the recording service, affected users are automatically logged off so unrecorded trades cannot take place.

TP ICAP believes the technology can further strengthen its execution services across voice-trading venues. The company is also looking to benefit from decreasing broking operations expenditure by reducing the real estate needed for technology infrastructure and disaster recovery sites.

“Our global broking business enables our clients to execute trades across multiple asset classes and markets. Excellent client service is a prerequisite, and this system enables us to meet those demands,” said TP ICAP’s group chief operating officer, Martin Ryan. “BT’s deep knowledge of voice and collaboration technology complements our wider ambitions to improve the efficiency of our client-facing services.”

Bernadette Wightman, managing director of banking and financial services at BT, added: “We look forward to working with TP ICAP to give its brokers the best technology experiences when communicating with colleagues and customers. TP ICAP prides itself in excellence in everything it does, so we’re delighted it has chosen our BT Trading platform as it transforms its trading floor operations to enhance agility, customer service and compliance.”