Dec 6th, 2010, Taipei
Ta Chong Bank in Taipei went live with FinIQ's Liquidity Link system at the end of November, to automate the liquidity-provision process in forex options.
The implementation took six months and connects the retail bank to an unnamed market-maker in the plain vanilla options market. Previously the bank sourced options prices over the phone.
In addition, the system gathers real-time cash balances for retail customers, along with various validations, making it one of the first implementations ever to have retail banking integration and real-time currency options trading within the same platform.
A vendor official said Ta Chong is using the system to trade currency-linked investment on behalf of customers. The bank takes the deposit and passes on the option to the third-party liquidity provider, the official said.
Commercial terms were not disclosed. The licence extends the bank's relationship with FinIQ, having gone live with FinIQ's Structured Products system to manage Ta Chong's currency-linked investment products offered via its treasury and branch network (FX Week, April 5). The system is web-based and automates pricing, dealing, settlement, customer correspondence and post-trade events.
FinIQ has already partnered with three unnamed interbank market-makers to deliver liquidity to the vendor's client banks through Liquidity Link. The FinIQ connectivity enables delivery of the best price quote straight to the retail banker's FinIQ desktop.
FinIQ is also building a similar bank-to-bank connectivity for equity-linked instruments, automating term-sheets and quotes workflows between issuers and distributors.
Source: FX Week