Icap has announced that it has upgraded its EBS spot FX platform, making it faster and adding enhancements. The company says that as a result, global deal times on the platform are now 75% faster than they were a year ago. Intra-regional deals are-now completed on average in five to eight milliseconds.
"We have a responsibility to our customers to stay ahead of the market in terms of technological innovation, reliability and speed," says David Rutter, deputy chief executive of Icap electronic broking, who outlined much of the technological plans the company had for EBS in the February issue of Euromoney. "We have worked hard to make the EBS platform more efficient, reliable and deterministic. We want traders to be confident that they will get their business done at all times, in all market conditions".
Icap has also reduced the price distribution interval, or time slicing, on EBS to 500 milliseconds for all customers, and subscribers to its EBS Live market data can now obtain refreshed prices every 250 milliseconds. The company has also confirmed that it is opening its front end to independent software vendors (ISVs), which was reported exclusively onthe WeeklyFiXon January 11.