Its great to look back at all the work we have achieved. Each project has had new discoveries and old friends.

Real-time Web-based Derivatives Quoting and Trading Application

Client: Credit Suisse

The equity derivatives division was investigating ways of using technology to automate portions of the sales and trading front-office functions in order to maximize sales. As part of this drive they had automated the pricing of many over-the-counter, 'vanilla' equity derivatives products. We took this automated pricing and exposed it directly to the banks clients over the Internet by providing a public web application for quoting and trading these products.

The application provided a set of product calculators that allowed the clients to tailor the economics of each product, and request a real-time price for that product. They could then compare a series of quotes based on different configurations. The application even automatically quoted common variations of the initial configuration that was provided. Once a client had decided to trade, the application would execute and book the trade automatically, interfacing with the downstream risk, hedging and booking systems as required.

The provision of this system had a great benefit for the bank, as they were able to quote and execute trades that were low margin, but high volume. This was previously not feasible as it required too much sales and trading time to process. As the sales teams and trading desks were no longer directly involved, the bank was able to open up a whole new market.

The project provided many challenges as it was very rare for the bank to make a web application accessible over the Internet. We had an extensive penetration testing phase, and we worked very closely with the branding department of the bank to ensure that we met their comprehensive requirements. The project was a great success and to date has brought in a large amount of business for the bank. The application has since expanded to include more product classes and regions.

Project highlights

  • Delivering focused solutions can have a huge positive impact on a business
  • It is crucially important to get buy-in from all stakeholders on a project and include them in the development process from the outset