Method and system for initiating and clearing trades
A system and method are provided for facilitating the exchange of data between one or more price providers and customers who communicate with the price providers through various portals, each of which may use it own data format. In transmitting data from customer to price provider, the data output from each portal is normalized to a standardized format and then transmitted to the appropriate price provider(s) where the data exchanged with the various portals can be viewed by a trader at a single display or can be exchanged with an automated pricing engine. The customer may also be provided with a universal Web site at which a customer may access any of the portals' Web sites to simplify access for the customer as well.
1. A system for electronically exchanging data related to financial transactions between a plurality of price providers which provides price quotes for trading financial instruments and executes trades and a plurality of customers of the price providers through a plurality of electronic portals, wherein each of the plurality of electronic portals is configured to use one of multiple different portal-specific data formats, the system comprising:
a plurality of gateways, each gateway being linked to a different one of the plurality of electronic portals, wherein the gateways are each configured to normalize a data stream received from any of the plurality of electronic portals from a respective portal-specific format to a single standardized format,
a central transit router that links the gateways to the price providers, the central transit router configured to aggregate multiple normalized data streams from the gateways into a single combined normalized data stream transmitted to the respective price provider,
wherein each gateway is configured to translate price provider data received in the single standardized format from the price provider via the central transit router to the respective portal-specific format of the particular portal of the plurality of electronic portals to which the data is routed, and
a price provider graphical user interface for display to at least one of the price providers, the price provider graphical user interface configured to substantially simultaneously display price quotation data exchanged by said at least one of the price providers with at least two of the electronic portals concerning the same financial product.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the data that is exchanged between the price providers and the customers comprises at least one of a customer request for a price quote for a trade, a price quote provided by at least one of the price providers, a message relating to negotiation of a price for a trade between the customer and at least one of the price providers, an instruction to complete the trade, a trade detail data, and free-format text based conversation.
3. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a display located at each of said at least one of the price providers for displaying the price provider graphical user interface.
4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the price provider graphical user interface is configured to display data from the at least two electronic portals substantially simultaneously in separate windows on the display, at least two of the windows having a substantially identical user interface.
5. The system of claim 3 , wherein each of the plurality of electronic portals utilizes a respective portal-specific graphical user interface, wherein the price provider graphical user interface comprises the portal-specific graphical user interfaces, wherein the price provider graphical user interface is configured to display the data from the at least two electronic portals substantially simultaneously in separate windows on the display using the respective portal-specific graphical user interfaces, and wherein the price provider graphical user interface includes a set of uniform commands for interacting with the at least two electronic portals.
6. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:
for each price provider, a price provider computer system arranged with an application program interface configured to present the normalized data in the standardized format to the price provider computer system so that the normalized data is readable by the price provider computer system, each respective application program interface of the price provider computer systems being connected to the central transit router.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein at least one of the price provider computer systems comprises an automated pricing engine that automatically generates a price quote in response to a request.
8. The system of claim 1 , further comprising an application program interface for presenting data in a normalized format to an internal computer system of a credit intermediary that extends credit to a customer.