GFI Group Inc. announced today the launch of FENICS Trader, a single point of access to multi-bank liquidity for foreign exchange options. This pioneering technology facilitates independent FX options price discovery, offering a “many-to-many” venue for bilateral trading and execution.
FENICS Trader is supported by 9 of the world’s leading banks, with others to go live in early 2011. Live liquidity banks include BNP Paribas, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, UBS and Unicredit Bank AG.
During a 6 month soft launch period, trade volumes grew impressively, rising to over 120 trades per month. This soft launch involved 20 of GFI FENICS’ clients.
FENICS Trader allows clients to calculate indicative prices based on banks’ proprietary volatility surfaces. Using “Request for Quote” (RFQ) technology clients receive a tradable price from their preferred liquidity bank. Once the price is agreed, electronic execution is completed on a bi-lateral basis. At present FENICS Trader supports European vanilla and simple two-legged structures. Trades can be priced in volatility or premium terms. FENICS Trader is available to clients via the FENICS Professional™ platform.
Richard Brunt, Global Head of GFI FENICS stated: “This is a very important step forward for GFI FENICS and for the FX options dealing community. FENICS Trader is the first many-to-many FX options execution platform, and the initial volumes have been hugely encouraging showing that this initiative is well supported by the market and valued by GFI FENICS’ client base, and is particularly relevant in light of the regulatory environment.”
Brunt added: “FENICS Trader was a logical enhancement to the FENICS Professional workflow solution. It removes the need for duplicate trade entry and manual price discovery via the telephone or electronic messaging.” Brunt continues: “As more liquidity providers join the community, our clients will have a wider choice of trading partners, accessible from a single, industry standard application.”
FENICS Professional is a suite of pricing, trading, risk management and STP components allowing customers to control, monitor and oversee every aspect of FX option trading and lifecycle management from a single interface.
GFI FENICS has been providing leading FX derivatives software since 1987. Its products are licensed to over 350 client firms worldwide – financial institutions and corporations – with thousands of users benefiting from its solutions. FENICS Trader additionally provides clients worldwide with access to a liquidity pool in order to bilaterally transact currency options.
Recent Comments