ICor Brokerage Ltd, the joint venture between Reuters and ICor Brokerage, has gone live with electronic broking of plain vanilla FX options via the Reuters Dealing 3000 platform to market participants in Asia Pacific.
The first currency pair to go live on 'ICor Brokerage FX Options' is AUD/USD. This will be followed by USD/JPY, EUR/JPY and six additional currency pairs over the course of 2002. The service has gone live across Asia Pacific at 14 banks with six additional Asian banks due to come onstream in February 2002.
Denis Copin, director, Societe Generale, comments: “The ICor system appears to be very user-friendly and will probably be one of the most important electronic derivatives systems of the future".
Dominic Yip, director - global FX options, WestLB, adds: "I found the system easy to use. I especially liked the direct chat function where I can talk to specific bids or offers depending on my interest."
ICor is working with Reuters on finalising a straight-through processing system for their customers which will be available later in the year.
The Asian launch is the first in a planned global roll-out which will extend to Europe and North America later this year. The company also plans to extend its services to incorporate the interest rate derivative market, adding interest rate swap and interest rate options broking during the third quarter 2002.
The launch follows the successful beta programme, which took place with 14 key banks in 2001 across the main financial centres of the Asia-Pacific region.