Trader Voice Goes Domestic! Big firms fluster while others move quickly

As restrictions on working from anywhere but home tighten trading operations are moving at different operational speeds with varying degrees of success. 

It was a very quick transition from office, to DR facility, to home. People had families, schooling, medical issues and all the other considerations we now know we need to live in isolation. Understandably then it took a while and still is for companies to quickly move work to that status. Global voice trading and broking was always going to present a problem that needs to be addressed quickly.

The initial response was to separate trading operations by sending teams to one or more disaster recovery facilities. Many of these failed to deliver due to lack of equipment like trading turrets and in one case I heard of none of the turrets had the correct connectivity and had never been tested. Another big European bank had no turrets and had to work 24/7 to get the lines re-routed and port the hardware across. Within a week (now) that facility has to close or reduce staff drastically. Working from home is the only option.

However long the restrictions on movement continue, financial markets operating smoothly are crucial to commerce and trade for the provision of goods and services globally and market participants will eventually get their continuity options that will stay in place and provide them with both in office and mobile options.

We are seeing an interesting pattern develop. The big firms that do not have a solution are either slowly making decisions or sending out an RFP. We have one for 450 positions and they expect the process to take 3 months!!.

Some of the remote turret fixes being used to access office turrets via vpn are unsecure and have no reliable VR ,broadcast or barge-in capabilities.

It is apparent that the small and medium trading and broking firms looking at solutions, can move quickly ordering within a day. Of course, they expect delivery the day after haha. 

In other cases I am speaking to medium sized firms that are battling with budgetary considerations that already have outdated hard turrets. There are many of these that didn’t expect to have more than a few traders out of office. It is a lesson to learn right across the trading spectrum as this may be an on and off siutation for months to come

dane@toopotech.com

#tradervoicecontinuity #voicebroking #MiTurret #Brokers #tradervoice