iPad - just a new device, or a new way of doing business?

It allows corporate finance to demonstrate its products in real time and with live data in its clients’ offices; it is a conduit for research information; it’s tool for distributing trader insight. But haven’t we always been able to do this? Surely real time product demonstration can be done on laptops? Information can be made immediately available to clients at their desks. Is the iPad really a game-changer for the investment banking sector?

The concept of mobility in technology terms has taken a huge leap in the past year with the ubiquity of smart phones, the rise of the tablet and the momentous arrival of the iPad to shake the market up. The always-on generation expects to receive and process large amounts of information easily and remotely.

The iPad of course, also invites the creation of new applications (still successfully peddling the build it and they will come approach). This has encouraged even investment banks to consider how to use this most portable and intuitive of devices.  They’re already looking at adapting trader contents (data, etc.) so that they may be delivered and consumed over this new mobile channel. Information and insight from traders to the bank’s clients can now be communicated using mobile apps and Morgan Stanley launched its research product last month, enabling its institutional clients to view reports on fixed income markets, stocks, currencies and economics.

Whether the iPad’s moment lasts or it is usurped by something newer and better, the improved, one-touch access to a bank’s data is what clients are now demanding. Mobility is all about accessibility and ease-of-use. It’s not just the new delivery mechanisms which have made taking a laptop to a meeting a bit last century, but the flexibility which mobile devices offer, the ease with which the bank’s data can be accessed, distributed...and paid for...this is where the iPad is already having an effect on the way we do business.

Graham Underwood, Managing Director, GFT UK.