Fixed income trading technology specialist, Wave Labs has onboarded Lombard Odier Group as its first buy-side client, The TRADE can reveal.
Stephen Grady
The engagement contract was signed early this year, with the firm fully integrated and operational, The TRADE understands.
“Having tools like e-LISA which is built by providers with direct practical experience of these challenges is rare and helps give us an edge in delivering outstanding trading outcomes for our clients,” Stephen Grady, head of global markets, executive vice president, at Lombard Odier, told The TRADE.
The agreement follows an increase in interest from the buy-side in recent times, with Wave Labs having onboarded its first hedge fund client back in June 2023.
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Speaking to The TRADE, Miles Kumaresan, chief executive of Wave Labs, explained: “When a major buy-side client chose to use the EMS from us, a start-up, this is the confirmation that eLiSA is offering something unique. Something contemporary. Something new.”
Wave Labs is focused on buy-side fixed income trading and works to facilitate a liquidity-driven marketplace, with its flagship offering eLiSa – an EMS centred around AI-based predictive analytics focused on automating the liquidity-seeking process.
“Fixed income market structure has been on a steep evolutionary trajectory in recent years. Delivering better execution for our clients meant we need to keep our trading technology at the forefront of functionality in order to capitalise on the new market structure […] Partnering with a provider that has an intuitive sense of this evolution and the needs of clients in general were critical factors when searching for a partner,” added Grady.
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Last June, Wave Labs announced it was set to offer a modular version of eLiSA EMS AI-based analytics tools to traders, providing access to eLiSA’s analytics in modular format including its artificial intelligence-based fair value calculator for bonds.
Kumaresan told The TRADE: “Naturally, at the start I only knew the kind of workflow I wanted to create, but not all the components that went into it. By showcasing what we were working on to traders and getting their honest feedback, we could create all the individual pieces of the puzzle.
“Now when we take a step back, eLiSA is complete, and you appreciate the product that has emerged as a result of working with over a dozen heads of trading.”
The business has a history on working to enhance the buy-side experience across the industry through technological innovations and has been highly active in the market over the last couple of years in particular.
Back in 2022, Glimpse Markets formed a strategic alliance with Wave Labs to provide its clients with access to a free web-based dashboard, with the collaboration aimed at increasing market transparency by making trade data available to all buy-side firms in an immediate format, at zero cost.