Deutsche Bank announced on Wednesday the launch of an updated foreign exchange trading platform on the firm’s signature Autobahn system. It is the latest of a number of firms that have rolled out revised FX trading systems in recent months.
The platform is designed to be more modular and component-based so it can respond quickly to changes in market structure, regulation or client need. In addition to Deutsche Bank, Citi, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Morgan Stanley have all upgraded their FX systems recently.
Maria Prata, head of hybrid FX sales for North America at Deutsche Bank, said that while many of the core components of the system remain the same, it offers several new, customizable features to help clients, whether they are proprietary trading firms looking for alpha or corporations using the system for hedging and settlements.
“We’ve taken the best of the old features of the Autobahn FX platform, and blended it in with some new products and enhancements,” Prata said.
Updates in the platform include a combined electronic and voice trade blotter that cuts across all execution channels, as well as real-time commentary alerts direct from the trading floor. The new platform also offers streaming non-deliverable swaps and promises superior workflow integration.
One element Deutsche Bank didn’t want to change was its spot liquidity window, which is how the platform streams spot prices to users.
“The spot liquidity window is a one part of the old platform that we have updated but not made changed too much,” Prata said. “We just worked on making a better user experience.”
Deutsche Bank claims to be the world’s largest foreign exchange bank by market share, citing a Euromoney survey. A recent report by Greenwich Associates lists Barclays as number one, with Deutsche Bank as number two, followed by Citi and UBS. Deutsche Bank has said it is committed to trading a trillion euros every week within the next two years. According to Prata, the firm is already more than halfway there.
The company said it will roll out the platform in staged releases over the coming months. More than 300 clients already use the new Autobahn platform, and Prata expects the majority of customers will migrate to it by the end of the year. Deutsche Bank said it will continue to support its existing FX platform until all clients have successfully migrated.
