ING Bank installs “whiteboard in the sky”
Dutch bank ING has installed enterprise data sharing
Dutch bank ING has installed an enterprise data sharing solution for its fixed income traders in Amsterdam , which the bank’s head of fixed income trading likened to a “whiteboard in the sky”.
Built by vendor MDXT Connect, the system was purchased by the bank to improve the communications between its traders and the firm’s global institutional sales offices. According to ING, the trading desk will be able to add pricing and analytics data required by the sales teams more efficiently than previously.
Historically, traders needed to publish the data to an external third-party data vendor, to which the sales teams had to subscribe to obtain access. Under the new system, the bank keeps the data internal.
“Our traders and sales people are now only limited by their own imagination,” said Marcus Welling, head of fixed income trading at ING Bank. “We are not as dependent on our internal IT department when we require new functionality. Moreover, with Microsoft Excel and MDXT Connect we can almost build anything.”
Data has always been a concern for financial institutions, but the quantity of data produced by modern automated processes, more stringent regulatory requirements, increased electronification of trading and increasingly complex capital market structure – including fragmentation of trading venues and proliferation of market data vendors and recipients – has highlighted the issue.
“Businesses that plan data governance in advance and tackle the problem holistically will achieve better quality data, more maintainable systems and improved usability,” said Julie Benson, test and implementation manager at data management specialist firm iMeta. “This will ultimately lead to fewer errors, clearer procedure documents and reduced training for new users.”
