Source: EBS, all data as of Q4 2020

EBS Direct
The re-platforming of EBS Direct to version 2.0 will provide best-in-class market data delivery and order processing times ‒ creating the most comprehensive, feature-rich, and fastest relationship-based streaming platform in the spot FX market.

Liquidity provider migration plan

We successfully migrated our first LP over to EBS Direct 2.0 in December and are now open for all other LPs to changeover as soon as possible. It only requires a simple re-conformance test; we are targeting completion by Q2 2021 and therefore kindly ask for your support.

LPs will benefit from better performance, faster market data throughput, and enhanced market maker protection to ensure more determinism around execution. You will receive further communications from your liquidity management and/or CIS representative regarding lab testing shortly.

Liquidity provider connectivity enhancements ‒ Multiplex pricing

A new feature is coming soon on EBS Direct 2.0 that will simplify our connectivity landscape, lower costs for LPs, and allow for more efficient pricing. Multiplexing offers LPs the ability to offer multiple price segments on a single FIX session pair (one for market data/pricing and one for trading) rather than requiring a separate pair for each price segment.

Next release ‒ ECN phase: What’s coming?

• ECN release will be available in Q2 2021, delivering market data and trade message processing times of 100 microseconds or less for clients wishing to consume an aggregated book of prices from a selection of LPs.
• LCs can fully customize their market data requests, including quote aggregation, market depth, and incremental refresh.
• Enhanced matching logic allows clients to preference their most reliable LPs and ensure a fast and optimal match.
• LCs can mix and match pass-through and ECN protocols. For example, using aggregated market data to search for best price and submitting pass-through orders directed to a specific LP for greater speed and determinism.
• Existing LCs will find it’s an easy migration to the new system, with the same FIX APIs they currently use supported.
• We will be inviting clients into the customer lab in February to commence migration, more details will be communicated separately by your liquidity management representative.

There has been a profound change in the FX trading needs of asset managers over the past several years, due to regulatory tightening and significant changes in the way banks service their FX clients. New FX platforms have emerged including our own – EBS Institutional (EBSI), an innovative solution delivering breakthrough technology designed to address these needs.

EBSI is a fully-automated execution management system (EMS), using industry-leading technology to significantly reduce trading costs and enhance performance, by automating and solving complex trading and workflow problems which other EMS platforms cannot offer. Through a unique set of eight real-time pre-trade execution compression algorithms, EBSI provides a means of instantaneously reviewing a basket of transactions to compare and contrast the net benefits and frictional costs of each trading method, which allows a trader to determine the most cost-effective means of executing those transactions – known pre-trade Expected Cost Analysis (ECA).

In addition, EBSI provides a total workflow solution, integrated to many of the leading OMS providers and client systems for STP. We provide elegant solutions to many agency trading workflow challenges such as eligible counterparties restrictions, multi-desk view, and broker desk functionality ‒ ensuring clients have access to their required and permitted liquidity sources whilst working to meet their regulatory obligations.

EBS Institutional - clients can expect significant performance improvement on their trading:

• Accumulate and direct FX orders
• Trade only within your defined parameters
• Our unique ECA tool enables clients to select the best competitively traded netting method and compare the expected cost with the other methods
• Our platform may ease the workload related to the customers’ best execution requirements
• Embedded real-time TCA
• Full counterparty mapping for each trade and customer trading rules
• Disclosed relationship trading, as well as options for anonymous execution
• Access to bank and non-bank liquidity
• Seamless pre-, post-, and on-trade allocations processing, delivered directly to the bank’s own API

Greater efficiency, reduced frictional cost of trading, and streamlined workflows are all necessities for the buy-side in an age where consolidation and cost-cutting has seen human resources on the trading desk decline ‒ while the emphasis on best execution increases simultaneously. This suggests that asset managers and hedge funds alike need to be more and more efficient in order to continue to deal with the orders they receive in an effective and timely manner.

Our belief is that better solutions can be created through continued innovation and rapid integration of multiple existing and new systems through some form of middleware, picking best of breed where it is needed and leaving robust operational processes firmly in place where they exist.