The site that won last year’s award is still the best in the market, and it is going from strength to strength. Derek Yates, director of fixed-income swaps e-commerce at UBS Warburg, says that on many days as many clients request prices online as over the phone. The website gives them a real-time overview of swap curves across 14 currencies and provides a way for salespeople to work with clients to identify and explain trade opportunities.
UBS Warburg’s interest rate swaps team has been busy. Its members are largely satisfied with their coverage of basic flow business and have created a whole new site that lets them work in-depth with clients on structuring prospective complex portfolio deals. A customer comes to the bank with a general idea for a transaction – for example, it might want to hedge its dollar risk on a set of trades, but wonder how this hedge will fit into the whole portfolio.
During the process of structuring a deal, each client gets access to a highly personalized version of the website. This automatically fills in with information about that client, along with the client’s existing interest rate swap portfolio and risk management objectives. Clearly this is all highly confidential.
Yates says: “The site is primarily a communication tool, designed so that client and salesperson can go through all aspects of a deal together online. It makes it much easier to reassure a client by showing them online exactly what we mean and exactly how the deal fits in with their portfolio. The alternative is to keep sending spreadsheets back and forth for discussion, which is inefficient and time-consuming.”
