Best Online Trade Provider: JPMorgan

Runner-up: Deutsche Bank/BoNYM
Commended: Citi/RBS/Wachovia/HSBC
2007 Winner: JPMorgan

While teams involved in putting together the multi-billion dollar structured trade finance deals arguably have the best time, it’s the backroom development of online services that provides the infrastructure that clients need everyday.

When it comes to online services, JPMorgan is the one to beat – reflected in the way it has scooped the Award the second year running.

There are a number of technical developments in JPMorgan’s offerings that helped propel it forward, says Michael Quinn, Managing Director and Global Trade Services Product Head at JP Morgan.

“The release of our TradeDoc trade services utility (TSU) product (recently renamed ‘JPMorgan TSU Connect’) has been well received. We have also provided, on a private-label basis, an interactive web-based service for preparing and exchanging ISO 20022-approved XML [extensible mark-up language] trade management messages to the SWIFTNet TSU,” he says.

That may mean little to the trade finance deal-team, but it means a lot to the clients that rely on the technology to underpin their international trade operations. Most important for them is the integration aspect, which has been driven by web standards.

“Our focus continues to be integration with customers’ systems to make their financial operations a by-product of their commercial business processes,” says Quinn. In other words, online banking services should seem like an extension of an organisation’s own systems. That even extends to such systems as the SWIFT messaging network, which banks have traditionally kept a tight hold over for reasons of security, as well as the technology limitations of the past.

“In the Online segment we see exciting opportunities, with SWIFT providing corporate access to Trade messaging. Though its impact will not be clearly visible until probably 2010 or beyond, it does provide the basis for repositioning client transaction initiation and, possibly, information retrieval,” says Quinn.