Integrated financial information provider FactSet has added fixed income trading capabilities to its Portware execution management system (EMS), which already supports electronic trading and automation services in listed assets and foreign exchange.
“Given liquidity constraints and reporting mandates, fixed income has lagged in adopting the trading technologies prevalent among other asset classes, creating a clear opportunity for improvement within the trading ecosystem,” said Rob Robie, executive vice president and global head of analytics and trading at FactSet.
“The introduction of fixed income trading capabilities to FactSet differentiates our multi-asset class platform and will help our clients seamlessly surface new insights and trade across asset classes with greater speed and efficiency.”
FactSet worked with long-time client GIC to provide the new fixed-income trading capabilities. The new features will operate alongside the other asset classes already supporting GIC’s global trading desks.
“Faced with greater demands and increased complexities, our traders need to have consistent workflows across asset classes, and the ability to incorporate smart automation and embed analytics tools for robust decision support,” said Jeffrey Tan, head of global trading at GIC.
“We worked with FactSet to develop strong fixed income trading capabilities which, when integrated with our internal decision-intelligence system, enable our teams to make fast, informed decisions, capture data, as well as track trade performance. This helps us achieve best execution for our global and diversified portfolio.”
Alongside connecting to established trading venues, FactSet has begun to integrate its EMS with various data providers and trading destinations to display pre-trade analytics related to pricing and liquidity relevant to blotter orders – including sourcing content from its fixed income data and analytics libraries.
In a statement it said that further investment and integration are planned to aggregate additional liquidity sources for its trading customers.
Earlier this year, FactSet expanded its portfolio analytics offering by integrating ICE Liquidity Indicators to enhance risk analysis for institutional investors. The integration offers clients a solution for analysing, managing and reporting on fund liquidity risk.