Global bank increases trader productivity with IPC

IPC provides a leading investment bank and global insurance firm with its MAXaccess 1000 trader productivity and business continuity solution, to help increase efficiency, and enhance collaboration between operational teams.

“Partnering with a firm that provides a complete, end-to-end solution integrating back-offi ce hardware with its desktop trading turrets and global network sites, provides us with a holistic business continuity plan. By building resiliency and mobility into the core of our infrastructure with IPC’s Enterprise Reach lines and MAXaccess 1000 software, we are positioned to reduce downtime, increase productivity and improve profitability. That’s a great return on our investment”
-Senior Vice President, Global Bank and Insurance Firm

Overview

After expanding its operations through two major acquisitions in 2007, a leading global banking and insurance firm (the bank) based in the United Kingdom (UK) looked for ways to consolidate much of its newly-acquired U.S. offices into a single location. The effort also created the opportunity to migrate their information technology (IT) systems from Time-division Multiplexing (TDM) to Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications. Additionally, the bank wanted to create a disaster recovery (DR) site that would augment their ongoing business continuity planning (BCP) initiatives. Looking for the latest in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)-based trading communications led the bank to industry leader, IPC.

Situation

With its steady growth to more than 40 million customers worldwide, the bank now conducts high volume daily from its trading centers in the UK, U.S., Hong Kong, and Singapore. This makes efficiency, scalability, reliability, and accessibility of trading systems critical to its continued success. When upgrading its infrastructure to an IP-based solution, the bank wanted to enhance collaboration capabilities across its trading desks and increase its traders' ability to make faster and more accurate decisions. Furthermore, it wanted a cost-effective solution to the wide range of potential business disruptions that could prevent its traders from access to turrets and asset liquidity.

Addressing Challenges

The global investment bank required a converged IP based trading solution with integrated BCP/DR capabilities to support global free seating. The integration of its globally based 1,000 turrets allowed IPC to demonstrate the resiliency offered through a single switch platform. IPC's Nexus Enterprise Reach solution further helped increase transparency among its front and back-office operations by sharing private lines, and allowing common lamping and users to barge in from their PBX phones.

With looming external pressures from regulatory bodies, threats of terror attacks, pandemic flu and natural disasters, the bank also wanted to ensure its traders were equipped to continue trading in the face of adversity. Considering the commitment required to implement an enterprise wide BCP solution, the financial firm wanted to ensure increased productivity to help achieve improved ROI.

A recent study conducted by an independent analyst group showed that on average, US and UK based traders transact approximately 15 telephone-related trades per hour – approximately, 1 every 4 minutes. This translates to estimated USD $6,000 revenue generated per trader per hour. In order to mitigate downtime, and help increase productivity, the bank licensed 250 of its select traders with MAXaccess 1000, a web-based soft turret solution, to mobilize them in the event of planned or unforeseen disruptions or disasters. The flexibility to trade from any location enabled the firm to maintain existing trade volumes despite various disruptions. "MAXaccess 1000 provides the flexibility to continue trading and interacting with the clients – regardless of time or location. And since it is highly scalable, we can add more traders to service more customers as our business continues to grow," said the bank's SVP.

Business Improvements

As an IPC customer for over 24 years, the bank has witnessed the firm's evolution and tenacity in innovation since its first implemented solution, TradeNet Analog System through its current IQ/MAX. The consolidation and simplification of its communications infrastructure has led to fewer points of potential failure, equating to less downtime, more productive hours, and lower maintenance costs. Using the SIP standard has helped increase and simplify interoperability with other systems that may be added in the future.

By breaking silos and converging technologies, IPC mitigated their clients' operational risk inherent in traditional trading solutions. Built on industry standard SIP, flexibility and resiliency are at the core of the bank's multi-data centers, which helps the bank protect against front-room and back-room disruption scenarios. This open architecture enhanced interoperability to allow for rapid deployment with other systems. For instance, the interface between Enterprise Reach and Avaya for PBX, and between the multi-switch IPVR and NICE for voice recording, has helped facilitate seamless integration.

Through application of two of its most innovative offerings, IPC provided the bank with a redundant and secure trading environment that uses a more flexible SIP standard. This provided the bank's traders and floor users with advanced unified communications and global free seating to facilitate trading in the US, UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The comprehensive solution demonstrated the resiliency offered through a single switch platform and cost effectively improved the bank's BCP.