Bloomberg plans to get salespeople talking again – all within the Global Code

Market data has been a contentious issue for as long as electronic trading has existed, but this year the topic re-emerged as an increasingly important battleground in foreign exchange.

A raft of new initiatives sprung up, either as planned solutions or recently launched feeds, all aiming to capture something new and more valuable, or in some cases better value for money.

Next year, Bloomberg, the winner of the Best Market Data Provider for FX category at the 2016 FX Week Best Banks Awards, plans to ramp up the push behind its new spot-pricing source, Bloomberg Generic Executable (BGNE).

"People find it challenging to provide market colour about what is going on. With BGNE, this now allows people to have a better understanding of what spreads are, and having a conversation around pricing liquidity is [what] the information section of the Global Code of Conduct did," says Colin Gallagher, global head of FX products and analytics at Bloomberg Professional Service.

BGNE is a combination of all the executable spot-pricing streams received by the data provider. The idea for the product came from clients' need for greater transparency around FX and spot pricing, as well as the amount of time customers spend on price discovery.

For the first time in quite a few years it has gone down in black-and-white print that it really is ok to talk… so BGNE will fit nicely into that part of the Global Code of Conduct
Colin Gallagher, Bloomberg Professional Service

"For the first time in quite a few years it has gone down in black-and-white print that it really is ok to talk, albeit with some parameters, so BGNE can act as a discussion piece to fit nicely into that part of the Global Code of Conduct," Gallagher adds.

Along with Bloomberg's FXGO platform, products such as BGNE enable salespeople to give clients an immediate idea of where liquidity is and what typical spreads are like in certain currencies. This improves productivity, not just for banks, but also for the buy side.

"The client on the buy side gets their answer faster, the salesperson delivers their information better and can provide a better service to their client without wasting time, and the salesperson doesn't have to bug the trader as well. So really, all-round it improves productivity and just provides an extra level of depth of clarity on pricing," Gallagher says.

"Some people want extra precision, some people want to know the spreads, and this can be very powerful in an environment where things are moving very fast. When you have a Brexit scenario, for example, and spreads are widening out because the prices are moving hyper-fast, to be able to monitor BGNE on the terminal, view the spreads and see what kind of liquidity [there] is of a particular currency pair – this is information that makes the world a more level playing field and provides transparency for all," he adds.

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