Citi, the New York-based global investment bank, has consolidated its electronic forex (eFX) trading platforms for corporate and professional investors into a new single dealer platform called Velocity 3.0. The new platform was built on HTML5 technology, Citi said in a statement released on Thursday.
Velocity 3.0, according to Citi, now singularly delivers the bank’s eFX offerings: CitiFX Pulse, the platform for forex spot, forward, non-deliverable forwards and swap pricing; Citi Velocity Trading, the platform that provides access to Citi’s capital markets services across equities, futures, forex and rates, among others; Citi Velocity Research, and CitiFX Click, the bank’s post-trading reporting platform.
“Velocity 3.0 provides a complete client offering: clients can mix-and-match the best of what CitiFX has to offer, delivering eFX à la carte via a host of connectivity solutions. The new HTML architecture framework has boosted performance across the platform, allowing us to bring together our richest digital solution to date,” explained Ala’a Saeed, CitiFX’s Global Head of Electronic Platforms, in the statement.
On top of that, Citi noted that Velocity 3.0 works with all popular operating systems and can be assessed from any browser across web, desktop and mobile applications. It described the new single dealer platform as “platform-independent technology.”
Citi Seeks to Redress Service Fragmentation
In the press statement, Citi explained that it decided to create a new single consolidated platform in order to address the problems of liquidity availability, operational resilience and transparency that occur as a result of fragmentation of eFX services. This fragmentation, it noted, is the byproduct of platform proliferation.
Compared to the other platforms, Citi said Velocity 3.0 is 71% faster with deal booking and 94% faster with order placement response.
“By leveraging the latest in cloud technology and the use of Micro Front Ends, Velocity 3.0 is an agile, scalable solution allowing for rapid addition of new features and allows Citi to respond to client feedback promptly,” explained Jon Lofthouse, the Global Head of Markets Technology at Citi.
