NetLink, developed by the ICAP-owned EBS platform and Traiana, is now in production with a number of industry leading banks.

Representatives from 35 different banks and 12 non-bank partners attended the workshops which presented a demonstration of the live NetLink solution, and outlined the NetLink post trade exception handling and aggregation solution.

The events were hosted by ICAP, the world's leading interdealer broker and Traiana, providers of post-execution STP for the FX market and were held at ICAP's headquarters in London and a hotel in New York.

Gil Mandelzis, Chief Executive Officer, Traiana Inc. said: "The events in New York and London provided a chance for the industry to hear from a number of banks about the value NetLink has already added to their operations and the netting challenges facing the industry as a whole.

"There is a clear need and demand in the FX industry for NetLink. Customers need to solve back office capacity issues and lower their settlement costs.

Bill Moran, Global Head of Product, ICAP Electronic Broking, said: "The growth of e-trading and program or algorithmic trading has led to a significant rise in transaction volumes and this is causing some concern for the middle and back-offices of the prime brokers.

"Streamlining the FX trading process using NetLink can provide banks with a more efficient, cost effective FX trading platform. EBS will be a adding a new Netting Interface component that feeds deals directly from the EBS matching engines to Traiana to facilitate netting. Counterparties using the EBS platform transact average daily volumes in excess of USD 145 billion (single count), compared with USD 100 billion three years ago."

Daily traded volumes in FX are increasing, while the market has also absorbed hundreds of new participants from both emerging and developed markets through prime brokerage relationships.

In addition to rising volumes, more FX organisations are trading smaller ticket sizes, but in greater numbers, through algorithmic trading, putting pressure on the back offices of the FX-trading banks.
NetLink solves this issue as it receives deals from the EBS dealing platform, HotspotFXi, FXMarketSpace or any other electronic platform and determines whether or not each deal is netting-eligible based on customer-defined parameters.

The majority of FX trades are then processed and netted by NetLink, and then electronically confirmed to the bank's back office either as deal tickets or simply as payment records.