EBS completes 90% of client migration to new platform

The move signals the final stages of the spot broker's four-year investment programme to upgrade its technology and operations.

The migration of the brokers to the new system enables remote servicing and upgrading capabilities, as well as enhanced messaging and transactional capabilities.

In effect, the platform is now able to handle volumes of three times the capacity of the record volume of $211 billion – single count – transacted through 107,299 deals on July 21, 2005. This volume was seen following the revaluation of the renminbi by the Chinese authorities last year.

Execution latency has also been reduced from about 500 milliseconds to under 400 milliseconds. In a normal trading day, the platform sees more than 600,000 quotes in the market, which need around 2.5 million system messages to be transacted.

The reduction in execution latency still falls short of that seen on other platforms which can often offer sub-100-millisecond execution speeds. However, traders seem unphased by this. "The growth of EBS over the past few years has seen it become deep and orderly. Therefore it will not have any immediate impact," said a trader at a US investment bank in London. "It will only matter if the market starts gapping."

A spokesperson added that the platform does offer best price and "the liquidity is so deep that customers can get the right price at the right time."

The new enhancements were achieved by upgrading the three main EBS global arbitrators in New York, London and Tokyo. Similarly, the core EBS telecommunications network has been re-engineered to provide 'best-of-breed' telecommunications lines and better messaging.

Reductions in latency have also affected the firm's data feed, EBS Live. The product is now delivering spot FX market data feeds direct from EBS Spot to customers at sub-180 millisecond speeds down from sub-200 milliseconds.

"The combination of a distributed architecture plus the EBS upgraded technology has created an extendable model for the FX market, creating a strong base for future profitability and growth," said the spokesperson.

The final stages of the upgrades include migrating the last 10% of customers on to the new IP platform, with the majority of this work now complete.

The upgrades were due for completion in the last quarter of 2005. However, they were delayed due to growing demand for the service. This meant the company had more new customer requirements to consider, such as the buy-side client base from the EBS Professional Trading Community, said the spokesperson. "We rescheduled the migration of new EBS customers to the upgraded IP system while we focused on our long-standing and core customer base of banks," he explained.