EBS continues to dominate spot

Competition for the brokerage market has been rife and has resulted in a series of high profile mergers in industry. To ensure a brokerage house remains in business would seem to require a forward-looking attitude in order to be best positioned for market evolution.

However, Mark Monahan, global head of sales at EBS in London, describes the broker's strategy as being more reactive than trail-blazing. "The overwhelming trend in the market is that it is changing very fast," said Monahan. "Rather than bringing about any of these changes, EBS has reacted to them as our customers have asked us to."

Over the past couple of years, the broker has built up its prime brokerage offering, giving customer banks trading access to EBS interbank rates This year the prime brokerage model has been extended to the professional trading community, so they too can trade on interbank rates via credit relationships with prime banks.

In July EBS responded to the rise in programme trading in forex by providing direct electronic access between bank clients' trading systems and the EBS Spot community using API technology. EBS Spot Ai was rolled out following a 12-month pilot with banks, including Bank of America.

Monahan said that because the firm has pushed out products only in response to customer request, demand for its premium products, prime business and Ai have been strong.

Going forward, the firm is looking to launch a certified vendor programme. "The concept behind that is to look for ways to make the implementations even easier and quicker than they are now," said Monahan.