Raiffeisen Partners with AxeTrading and Integral
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: February 23, 2021
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has partnered with fixed income trading software provider AxeTrading, and FX technology provider Integral, to deliver a trading solution for its bond trading clients by providing real-time streaming of FX prices into their bond trading workflow.
The firms say the collaboration has enabled RBI to provide faster and better pricing for their clients in local currency bonds while significantly reducing their request for quote (RFQ) response time and increasing their hit ratios. By combining the capabilities of the AxeTrader Quoting and Execution Management System (QEMS) and Integral’s BankFX pricing engine, RBI can reduce its risk as a market-maker by automatically hedging the currency exposure of the bond trade. 
The AxeTrader QEMS, which offers a single desktop that aggregates markets, data and trading workflows, automatically makes a Request for Stream (RFS) to the Integral BankFX pricing engine, which then provides real time streaming prices via an API directly into the RBI bond trader’s RFQ workflow to deliver more efficient and transparent pricing. When the bond trade is completed the corresponding FX transaction is automatically executed by RBI’s own FX trading desk.
The firms say the solution is applicable to all traders in local currency bonds who need certainty, clarity and efficiency at the same time capturing as much of the spread with an automated workflow, making trading as profitable as possible and automatically hedging the associated FX risk.
“Closing the last technical gap between fixed income and FX products to provide combined pricing with maximum efficiency, has been a top priority for us,” says Harald Müller, head of group capital markets trading and institutional sales at RBI. “Furthermore, the already available integration supports current and future digitisation and automation initiatives in RBI’s capital markets area, on top of enhancing our current infrastructure.”
Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral, adds, “Integral is committed to partnering with providers that share our philosophy of opening-up the institutional markets through the provision of sophisticated and highly configurable trading technology and workflow. Working with AxeTrading on this solution puts this principle into practise in an extremely valuable way.”
Ralf Henke, CEO of AxeTrading, says, “We are part of a new generation of technology providers whose ethos and business are built around openness and interoperability. The effective use of APIs and adoption of common standards drive our clients beyond the legacy technology providers with their limited ‘walled gardens’. Traders are able to benefit from their choice of connectivity to the broadest ecosystem of trading and data applications.”
