Interdealer broker ICAP plc (LON:IAP) has announced that its unit Traiana, which provides pre-trade risk and post-trade processing solutions, has seen a threefold growth in allocation volumes via its Harmony Equity Swaps service as clients embrace the post-trade efficiencies it provides in a period of regulatory change.
The platform achieved growth of 185% between May 2015 and May 2016, following strong growth of 144% over the same period the prior year.
The Harmony Equity Swaps solution reduces the cost and complexity of post-trade processing for the contract for difference (CFD)/ equity swaps market by providing a central, automated and secure electronic messaging and matching service to buy and sell side firms, outsourcers, trade repositories and CCPs.
Laura Craft, Traiana
Growth has been particularly strong in the Asia-Pacific region, with volumes now making up 26% of the total, from just 2% two years ago as global brokers and local brokers in Australia, Hong Kong and Japan join the Harmony network. This reflects the strong adoption of electronic trading in this market, increased access by global buy-side firms, growing volumes in the give-up market and an increased focus on straight-through-processing services by global synthetic equity prime brokers.
Adoption of Harmony Equity Swaps has expanded geographically and by community, with over 1,000 participants active on the network. Improving functionality by automating the give-up allocation process and launching a new intuitive web-based user interface has led to increased take-up and faster investigation and resolution of exceptions.
Laura Craft, Director of Product Strategy for Equity & Fixed Income at Traiana said:
The strong growth in allocation volumes via the Harmony Equity Swap service highlights the value that Harmony and automation more generally can bring to this market, which has traditionally been manually intensive. We also see this growth as a validation of Traiana’s cross asset expansion strategy as we continue to move into new asset classes.
Traiana Harmony processes more than US$1.5 trillion daily, with over three million trades per day flowing through the network. The continued expansion of the equity swap network, particularly in Asia, will significantly improve risk management by automating the give-up process, streamlining straight through processing and improving transparency.