Sell-Side Technology Awards 2025: Best sell-side front-office platform (end-user)—Bank of America

Overview

Deal Central is Bank of America’s (BofA’s) in-house-developed book-building platform that changes how fixed income, equities, and loans are managed. It allows BofA’s syndicate desk, sales, and operations teams to execute end-to-end deal workflows more seamlessly, connecting issuers and investors through a single, unified platform. By integrating execution management system (EMS) and order management system (OMS) functionality, Deal Central delivers auditability, precision and operational efficiency.

The solution  

Designed to streamline workflows, Deal Central facilitates:

• Real-time order aggregation: consolidates and updates orders in real-time
• Price discovery and allocation: enhances book-building efficiency with dynamic pricing tools
• Regulatory compliance: improves transactional adherence to global financial standards
• Seamless trade execution: executes trades with accuracy and speed. The platform minimizes operational risks, enhances decision-making, and enables secure, high-volume transactions.

Secret sauce  

Deal Central’s success is down to its:

• Scalability: Built to handle large transaction volumes, the platform processed $6 trillion in orders in 2024.
• Real-time updates: provides live data synchronization for all logged-in users, fostering transparency and reducing risks
• Integrated architecture: combines book-building, execution and risk management functionalities into a cohesive system, driving efficiency
• Innovative design: continuously evolving to incorporate the latest technologies that anticipate market trends/demands

Recent milestones

• Transaction growth: processed over $6 trillion in transactions in 2024, demonstrating high scalability
• Expanded functionalities: added advanced allocation tools and compliance tracking to meet global regulatory demands
• User adoption: achieved widespread adoption across syndicate, sales, and operations teams

Future objectives

• Enhanced analytics: introduction of AI-driven insights allowing for deeper market trend analysis
• Global expansion: extending platform capabilities to support approved cross-border transactions and multi-currency operations
• Client collaboration: building new features to enhance issuer and investor collaboration and experience

Why they won

Bank of America’s win in this year’s Sell-Side Technology Awards is notable, given that it’s not often that end-user firms enter these awards—there are no categories that cater specifically for end-users. During the first round of voting this year, there were two entries that were head and shoulders above the other 10 in this category: Bloomberg and Bank of America. And rather than “lose” one of them, we decided the best course of action would be to accommodate both and split the category along vendor and end-user lines—such was their quality. 

Bank of America’s success comes on the back of its outstanding Deal Central platform that connects its syndicate desk, sales, and operations teams and allows them to execute end-to-end deal workflows by connecting issuers and investors through a single multi-asset class platform. What Deal Central has allowed BofA to do it truly impressive—the bank processed $6 trillion in orders during 2024, a figure that would have been inconceivable were those orders managed by disparate systems spread across various departments within the bank. BofA, take a bow—what a brilliant achievement.