Sell-Side Technology Awards 2023: Best sell-side trading communication system—IPC Systems

Overview

Unigy, IPC’s flagship solution, is a trading and communications platform, purpose-built to address the specific needs of the regulated global financial markets community. Using the latest standards-based technology and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for flexibility and scalability, Unigy provides 110,000 middle- and back-office users with connectivity and communications functions, streamlining the trade lifecycle and making users more productive, compliant and efficient, particularly with respect to remote access and working environments.

The solution

Unigy enables traders to search contacts rapidly and communicate with thousands of connections, alongside a broad array of surveillance, management and maintenance tools that support and enhance firms’ trading communications infrastructure and capabilities. Users leverage out-of-the-box Unigy apps to enhance speed, efficiency and productivity as well as developing their own applications using Unigy’s software development kit.

Secret sauce

• Voice enabling applications and natural-language processing line sharing: PBX users can monitor line status and access private wires to make and receive calls (and join existing calls)
• User access flexibility: soft client, mobile client, Connexus Cloud, etc.
• Infrastructure-as-a-service solutions, including managed, on-demand IaaS and custom cloud connectivity services
• Connexus Unigy: unified platform for trading communications and cross-enterprise systems’ integration (high-/low-touch enablement)

Recent enhancements

Continuing development of IPC’s app framework including:

• Integration of BondWave pre-trade price discovery tool for instantaneous trader monitoring and surveillance of market activity
• BondWave calculator in the IPC Unigy turret, enabling users to determine pre-trade, fair market value of bonds (with additional benchmarks across regulatory prescribed waterfall)
• Partnership with the Newsquawk multi-asset audio market data service, leveraging proprietary smart search technology to capture market intelligence from multiple mainstream and social channels

Future objectives

• Focus on collaboration with industry partners to extend IPC’s global footprint and continuously enhance user value and customer experience
• Partnership with Voxsmart for capturing, monitoring and analyzing business communications data
• Continuing development and rollout of Unigy Soft Client and Mobile Client applications

Why they won

IPC has an impressive record across these and the annual Buy-Side Technology Awards, thanks largely to its outstanding Unigy platform. Unigy is so much more than an integrated trading and communications platform―it is a community in its own right around which large numbers of buy-side and sell-side firms have coalesced in the interest of connecting, communicating and trading. And now that Unigy is available as a mobile offering only enhances its appeal to both sides of the market.