GFI Group (NASDAQ: 'GFIG') announced today that the Bank of East Asia (BEA), the largest independent local bank in Hong Kong, has deployed Fenics Enterprise, the market-leading FX system.
Fenics Enterprise will provide the bank with an enhanced level of technology to service their new retail dual currency investment business in Singapore and will allow it to connect its sales and trading teams while providing open analysis tools that interact with and connect to its in-house systems seamlessly.
An advanced suite of products launched in 2008, Fenics Enterprise makes pricing and analyzing the bank's dual currency investment products more efficient for the bank's options team across Hong Kong and Singapore. The flexibility and time to deployment offered by Fenics Enterprise made the system the bank's preferred choice.
"We are very pleased to be working with BEA in Hong Kong and Singapore and of being of assistance in their dual currency investment business" said Elliott Hann, GFI Fenics Head of Sales for Asia Pacific. "Fenics Enterprise opens up the core strength of Fenics in pricing and risk management, widening exponentially the applications of this technology. In this case, Fenics Enterprise provides sales tools for the effective governance of private wealth management products and the resulting business flows."
Richard Brunt, Global Head of Fenics added "We are delighted that BEA has chosen Fenics Enterprise as their system for distribution of retail products. This is an area of the market that we expect to grow as banks continue to look to bring efficiencies to their operations, empowering their sales people with cutting edge tools that allow them to price and book yield enhancing retail products on the desktop, with instant trade capture flowing back to their trading desk and back office systems."
A dual currency investment is an instrument that combines a money market deposit with a currency option to provide a higher yield than that available for a standard time deposit. At maturity, withdrawals can occur in either the principal deposit currency or the linked currency. Dual currency investments offer higher yields in return for the risk taken on the foreign exchange movements. Principal currency investments are also a form of dual currency investments.