Technology

Our technology is pivotal to our success. In order to remain competitive, our technology developers must not only ensure that our electronic, voice and post-trade platforms meet the needs of our customers but also that we are able to anticipate their needs in a rapidly changing environment.

The ability to transact at ever faster deal speeds, with instantaneous response times, on systems with the highest level of stability and security is pivotal to our customers’ success and, by extension, our own. The extreme volatility caused by the crisis in the financial markets has meant that our technology and, in particular, our OTC broking platforms, has been put to the test more than ever before. Our platforms performed well in these more challenging conditions. Global average deal completion time on the EBS platform for spot FX continues to drop and is down 80% from two years ago.

To maintain the highest standards, we make continual, strong investment in our technical infrastructure to improve our key performance metrics of:

• stability
• availability
• recoverability
• operational control
• security
• performance
• capacity
• latency reduction

This is done through a strategic planning process for managing our technology portfolio. We define our IT strategy over a three-year time horizon and maintain it iteratively by engaging in ongoing discussions with customers to gain their feedback. Strategic initiatives include broader adoption of standards based messaging, such as FIX/FAST, platform and networking technologies.

During the year we spent 11% of our revenue on our technology. This is a significant investment but is essential to ensure that our technology – both voice and electronic – remains competitive. We achieve significant economies of scale by leveraging internally developed and externally acquired trading platforms. ICAP now has a global IT network of over 630 IT professionals based in EMEA, the Americas and Asia Pacific.