NatWest Markets Restarts Rollout of Axe Data Add-In After Covid-19 Disruption

NatWest Markets has restarted the rollout of its Microsoft Excel add-in, built by ipushpull, to allow buy-side clients to download axe trader-interest data.  

Ipushpull began building a tailored Excel add-in for NatWest Markets at the end of last year. “We were actually just starting to roll it out when the [Covid-19] lockdown started,” says Julien Dugat, who works in fixed-income client execution platforms and digital sales at NatWest Markets.

“During the lockdown, especially when it started, axe data has been absolutely critical. Everybody was after inventory and liquidity, and axes were really important. So I think the ability to stream data directly to clients was really a key advantage for us,” Dugat says.

Dugat says the lockdown slowed the rollout of the bolt-on, but NatWest restarted the process last week.

In distributing axe data, a trader sends a list of available bonds and their prices to clients each morning. This can be done manually through Excel spreadsheets, a process that Dugat says is cumbersome and time-consuming for clients. It can also be done through electronic platforms. This is easier from the dealer’s perspective, but Dugat says clients still need to download and manually add the information into their order management systems to find out who to trade with.

He says NatWest Markets had been looking for a way to distribute axe data to clients in a more focused way. The service offered by ipushpull appealed to the firm, and it started engaging with the vendor in 2018.  

NatWest Markets spent last year building axe distribution architecture to allow it to send axe data in real time to ipushpull and other venues. In October 2019, it announced a partnership with ipushpull.

Initially, this architecture allowed NatWest clients using Symphony’s chat platform to access data from ipushpull. “The main attraction for us was the ability to distribute axe data directly to our clients through ipushpull and give clients the ability to seamlessly go from this data to Scout, our request-for-quote (RFQ) workflow tool on Symphony,” Dugat says. 

However, many NatWest Markets clients do not have Symphony, or might want to consume data in another fashion. So NatWest Markets asked ipushpull to build an Excel add-in that could be used by its clients, many of which are asset managers.

For Dugat, the advantage of ipushpull was the multiple ways for clients to consume data that NatWest Markets would send to ipushpull. “Once we send our axe data to ipushpull, clients can consume it in Excel, but if they are on Symphony, they can also consume indirectly on to the Symphony platform,” he says. “So we can embed the data directly into chat. And the key advantage for us is we have some digital workflows on Symphony.”

Ipushpull already has an Excel Add-In, which was then tailored to the needs of NatWest Markets. It is called the NatWest Markets Excel Add-in. “The build they did for us is to publish to a specific axe data entity and consume this data from a NatWest Markets-branded Excel add-in,” Dugat says. “We have been distributing it through our Agile Markets platform so clients can download it from there.”  

He says NatWest Markets uses ipushpull mostly for rates and credit when it comes to axe data. However, it also uses the vendor’s offering for foreign exchange (FX), especially in the US.

Matthew Cheung, CEO at ipushpull, says users of its Excel Add-In include buy-side and sell-side firms, inter-dealer brokers and reference data companies. He says NatWest Markets can now share live axe data prices with clients.

“In the case of axes, this means no more stale prices,” he says. “This transforms manual processes to data-driven processes where the data takes center stage rather than processes happening around the data.”

Cheung also notes that although Microsoft Excel is the common standard across the financial markets due to end user computing (EUC) regulatory constraints, the sell side is trying to reduce Excel usage. However, this has not really impacted the prolific use of Excel by bank desks. “Those EUC constraints are not as overbearing on the buy side and thus Excel is still heavily used,” he says.

NatWest’s Dugat says the firm plans to expand on ipushpull’s flexibility in the data it can distribute.

“The next step for us is to expand this universe into other types of data,” Dugat says. “So we’re talking about things like prices—for instance, the ability for us to distribute price data via ipushpull. Any data that we want to send directly to a client, ipushpull is a good stack for that.”