AFTAs 2016: Best IT Team—JPMorgan Asset Management

So it's no surprise that the best IT team category also went to the venerable firm. Specifically, the judges chose to single out the asset manager's Cortex team, which is currently working on the delivery of a comprehensive solution for electronic trading, order management and execution for JPMorgan Asset Management's Global Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities Group (GFICC).

Cortex is an electronic trading platform that combines execution and order management capabilities for JPMorgan Asset Management’s foreign-exchange (FX) desk. It was successfully delivered in the first quarter of 2016. It was built in a scalable way such that it is now being extended for fixed-income over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives and liquidity products, says Lucia Pino-Garcia, global head of fixed-income trading technology for JPMorgan Asset Management. “This is an industry-leading platform that supports material economic savings across the whole transaction lifecycle, offering significant efficiencies over manual execution,” she says.

Cortex offers hundreds of streaming real-time prices from counterparties, with prices sorted automatically, best to worst, for efficient, one-click best execution. Additionally, traders can stream prices in real time and execute multiple transactions at the click of a button. Improvements to latency result in real-time price streaming and best execution within milliseconds.

Regulatory requirements—most notably around Mifid II—and changes in fixed-income market liquidity are driving projects from the team. Key to its performance is the global reach of developers and close integration with the traders, as well as the use of the Agile development methodology.

“The team has delivered an industry-leading solution that provides added value to our business. I cannot tell you how proud I am of both the technical architecture as well as the ethos of the team,” Pino-Garcia says. “The technical architecture comprises a modern, intuitive and high-performing interface as well as a micro-services architecture using best in-class technologies. The team operates in a truly agile manner, practicing peer programming even between team members who are not co-located to keep the strong technical expertise globally in our organization. There is a strong focus on continuous learning as well, which allows us to keep up with the latest technologies to include them safely into our platform.”

Cortex offers hundreds of streaming real-time prices from counterparties, with prices sorted automatically, best to worst, for efficient, one-click best execution. Additionally, traders can stream prices in real time and execute multiple transactions at the click of a button.

Offered every year since the AFTAs launched in 2005, nine other firms have won this award: Credit Suisse (2007 and 2009), BNY Mellon (2012 and 2013), Bear Stearns (2005), NYMEX (2006), HSBC (2008), State Street (2010), Barclays (2011), Societe Generale (2014) and Morgan Stanley (2015).