Caplin, a provider of real-time web connectivity to financial markets, today unveils Caplin Trader, an out-of-the box web trading application that enables banks to build multi-product trading portals for FX and fixed income trading. Caplin Trader enables a broad range of FX and fixed income instruments to be traded online.
“With Caplin Trader, banks can build scaleable and functionally-rich online portals in order to gain and retain online market share,” says Paul Caplin, chief executive, Caplin Systems. The key differentiator of the Caplin platform is that it runs on Ajax technology, making it portable and reliable. “Ajax offers the ability to create rich applications that will open and run reliably in any web browser. It also gives users access to all of the browser’s vast graphical capabilities,” notes Caplin.
While the equities space already has an elaborate technology infrastructure including FIX messages, FX and fixed income do not. “The web is increasingly being seen as the natural medium for buy-side communications in FX and fixed income,” comments Caplin.
Although most major investment banks already have online trading portals, these prototypes are often not robust enough for client needs, according to the firm. “Most banks built FX portals three to four years ago and are now finding that the market demands more,” says Caplin. “The buy-side is increasingly trading bonds and currencies, which is driving the need for banks to adopt new technology,” he continues.
The connectivity provider has been developing the software components behind this technology for the last year and a half. One major tier 1 bank has been working with the firm to build a cross-product trading tool for FX and fixed income, which it plans to launch in a month’s time, according to Caplin. Three other large banks are also planning to build multi-product trading portals for their clients using Caplin Trader. Caplin’s technology serves over 80,000 end-users in financial institutions including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada and ABN Amro.