Sovereign Bank will now be able to provide its clients with a sophisticated web-based trading tool to strengthen its retail FX business.

SIERRA First Order is a web-based order management engine that provides distributed, cross product trading tools. Designed for both institutional market making and retail-trading environments, SIERRA First Order automates the transfer of deal capture activities from customers and institutional clients to the trading room desktop.

Patrick Cannon, managing director of GL TRADE North America Capital Markets Solutions business unit said: "In the rapidly growing FX retail market, banks have to adopt high technology solutions to increase customer satisfaction, operational agility and flexibility. The implementation of SIERRA First Order will allow Sovereign Bank to achieve straight through processing (STP), keep improving its investment performance, lower risks, and reduce costs for its FX retail trading operation".

"At Sovereign Bank, we are always looking for ways to better serve our clients," said Robert F. Murray, Sovereign's senior vice president, Capital Markets. "We understand the FX business is important to our clients so we have aimed to provide the best FX retail trading experience for them. SIERRA First Order enables our clients to have easy access to streaming rate dealing, position management, deal status check and current market quotes. The decision to select SIERRA First Order to complement our ASPEN offering allows us to streamline our retail and interbank FX operations by fully automating the transaction workflow."

Sovereign has been a GL TRADE customer since 2006 when they selected ASPEN, an ASP trading solution that provides comprehensive real-time position management, risk analysis, and gap exposure in a straight through processing environment. Now, with the addition of SIERRA First Order, Sovereign achieves a streamlined FX trading workflow under a single database for all customer, product, and financial information.