Banks stake their future on structured products e-platforms

Industrial evolution

Around two years ago, most dealers started to ready automatic price-quoting systems, based on emails, that enabled private banks to get prices for certain regularly used products at the touch of a button. A few years earlier, UBS even took the step of developing a full click-and-trade system that enabled the relationship managers at its private bank to browse products and underlyings and experiment with different calibrations of pricing and payoff.

Now, during the post-crisis lull, banks are