OREANDA-NEWS.    BT today announced a new cloud-integrated innovation for financial markets that puts traders in control of increasingly complex trading strategies and demanding client relationships.

Called BT Netrix HiTouch, the new touchscreen device acts as a control centre for collaboration among traders, their clients and counterparties and the wider pool of experts involved throughout the trade cycle. It enables individuals and groups to rapidly communicate in what is a highly complex, real-time environment. It empowers them to make faster and more informed decisions with the help of the latest high-definition visual and audio interfaces and communications services, integrated with their specialist trading applications and market information.

BT Netrix HiTouch reflects the transformation in the industry as new regulations, emerging market dynamics, waves of innovation and changing demographics take hold.

With the swipe of a finger, it allows traders to tap into the hundreds of apps, market data feeds and communications services delivered by the BT Radianz Cloud, including BT’s specialist trading floor and enterprise voice, video and conferencing services.

The Radianz Cloud is the world’s largest secure networked financial community. It brings together thousands of institutions from across multiple asset classes throughout the entire trading cycle, including banks, brokers, investment managers, third-party application providers, exchanges and market data vendors.

The three-way integration that BT is enabling among Netrix HiTouch, the applications on traders’ screens and the services in the Radianz Cloud, allows traders to access and share market information and research, talk to their clients through specialist communications services, engage in high-definition multi-party audio and video conferences, capture orders and trade, all through an integrated desktop and powerful touchscreen-driven collaboration device. This shaves precious seconds from the time it takes traders to make decisions and allows them to have richer, more timely contact with clients, helping build loyalty and win new business.

Netrix HiTouch is underpinned by an agile technology infrastructure that allows firms to manage costs and stay in line with increasingly strict compliance and risk regulations. It gives traders control and flexibility across a range of execution styles, from pure “high-touch” trading (involving lots of human-to-human contact), through “hybrid trading” (a mix of human interaction and electronic trading) to “low-touch” electronic algorithmic trading.

Tom Regent, president, global banking and financial markets, BT Global Services, said: "As financial markets firms adapt to ever more stringent regulations and the need to retain more capital in reserve, traders are under increasing pressure to make the right decisions faster and maximise increasingly elusive investment returns. In response, trading strategies are becoming more complex, involving a greater mix of execution styles. On top of this, a new generation of trader is emerging, used to the speed and convenience of consumer devices such as smartphones and tablets. It’s a perfect storm — and traders are at the very eye of it.

“BT Netrix HiTouch should be at the heart of every trading strategy, complementing low-touch automation with high-touch collaboration and expertise. Its new interface gives traders intuitive touchscreen control of their communications, with the same ease with which they use their smartphones and tablets in their personal lives, integrated with unmatched breadth and depth of the applications delivered by our world-leading BT Radianz Cloud.

“Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of product launches that underlines our commitment to continue to lead the way in innovating in financial services technology and networking for the benefit of our customers.”

Rebecca Healey, senior analyst, Tabb Group, said: “As the industry continues to shift to greater automation, both buy and sell side now need to leverage their use of technology to optimise liquidity, relationships and resources. Only the combined interaction between man and machine will enable traditional brokerage services to re-emerge in a new and more cost efficient manner, delivering the next generation in trading.

“BT Netrix HiTouch has been designed to address these challenges. BT has positioned it as the control centre sitting at the heart of its end-to-end capability of solutions and services for financial markets across the entire trade cycle — from pre-trade to post-trade and settlement. It allows a mix of execution strategies but importantly, regardless of whether using high-touch, low-touch or hybrid trading, it gives access to person-to-person collaboration tools, integrated with applications and market data feeds available in the BT Radianz Cloud.”

BT has been serving the needs of financial markets customers for over 30 years. Netrix HiTouch builds on its extensive installed base of 68,000 trading turrets used by financial markets firms worldwide. One in three traders depend on BT Netrix trading turrets – more than 68,000 users in 1,400 trading rooms around the globe.