Merrill Lynch wins a special award for most improved bank in fixed income partly because it has overhauled its technology, It has rolled out a number of new features, many of which are very sales-friendly. And it has done all this cheaply.
Stefano Blotto, managing director of online fixed income at Merrill Lynch, says: “The traditional approach has been the e-commerce teams dictating to the business and the clients. We’ve turned around the paradigm of who dictates to whom.”
It shows. Several of the new applications that the bank demonstrated this year brought sales teams into the loop. For example, sales can now look at a blotter for each client, which shows the client’s activity not just on MLX, the bank’s own site, but also on TradeWeb, MarketAxess, BondHub and Merrill’s Bloomberg site. They can see not just the trades done, but each enquiry.
Through a system called DebtFlow, sales can also track all the bond trading from the bank’s inventory, and see where and with whom it is placed. Sales teams can also see all the trading flows inside Merrill Lynch – where the best demand is, on a geographic and investor-type basis. This helps to draw out patterns and suggest transactions to clients.
Axe Match is another new feature for Merrill Lynch, rolled out in August. It enables clients and sales people to see and sort the bank’s trading inventory. Clients can also import their portfolios to see where they match with the axe.
In new issues, Merrill Lynch is also, with Salomon Smith Barney, an investor in I-Deal, a platform being launched globally. For this and DebtFlow, Merrill was awarded runner-up in our new-issue award.
Another useful tool for internal use is a screen that tracks transactions through all of the electronic trading platforms that the bank uses, with just a short delay. So at any point the bank can see what volumes are going through Bloomberg, BondVision, MarketAxess, TradeWeb and so on – all on one screen. This makes it easier to assess the success of the different channels that Merrill Lynch uses. No other bank could demonstrate a tool such as this.
On the retail side, part of Merrill Lynch’s strategy this year has been a drastic scaling back of its operations globally. As Blotto says: “The firm is not going to deploy resources directly onto retail customers, therefore we are going to outsource our business to financial consultants.”
It is doing this through a new online tool called Bondshop. This application is a white label franchise, presenting the bank’s bond inventory, plus some basic information and analytics. This is pitched to financial consultants around the world, who are able to customize it for their retail customers.
On top of all this, Merrill Lynch is the only firm to stress the importance of its customer service teams.
