Trends in E-commerce 2019

E-commerce services play a pivotal part in banks’ long-term transition to and successful implementation of agency-trading business models. In 2019 the provision of such digital services remains uneven across the five asset and instrument classes surveyed for this report:

• cash equities;
• listed derivatives and structured products;
• fixed income, including both credit and rates;
• FX and money markets;
• emerging markets products; and

GreySpark finds that bank efforts to update their technology stack so as to facilitate more frequent deployments of new builds or updated functionalities are readily evident in the breadth and depth of change in e-commerce services since the implementation of MiFID II.

The report also evaluates bank efforts to re-imagine the manner by which they can use knowledge asymmetry to drive revenues. In 2019, a number of banks offer their clients data-centric services, specifically services in which underlying data is augmented with analytic capability to deliver actionable information. In doing so, a new role emerges for banks’ front-office staff, and their relationship with clients changes significantly.