Bank of America hires to build new FX platform

The bank has been hiring aggressively over the last two years to strengthen its global FX team, and has now turned its attention to heavily recruiting IT personnel and FX systems developers

Projects at BofA will include re-architecting the bank's electronic trading infrastructure and implementing new risk management systems to develop next-generation pricing and automated trade execution systems for FX.

Sharon McWalter, a financial services consultant at Spencer Rose, says that while FX systems development skills are available, experienced developers are hard to find and expensive, commanding basic salaries of between 100,000 and 150,000.

"Banks are predominantly looking for developers with C++ and Java knowledge and a high number of specific skills-somewhere between 5-10 skills are usually specified," McWalter says. "Strong business knowledge is required as well as a working knowledge of the main FX systems out there, such as Calypso, Summit and Murex. An understanding of FX derivatives trading systems is also a common requirement."

The talent pool for electronic order routing and management systems has significantly widened over the years as electronic trading in FX is now well established, with the online FX trading portal, FXall, now entering its fifth year of operation. However, McWalter adds that the newest version of the FIX protocol for fixed income transactions, FIX 4.4, "has only just been released and many of the larger banks are still working with older versions."

Bank of America is a liquidity provider on FXall and a settlement member of CLS.

Michael Lappin, managing consultant FM IT at London-based recruitment agency Mantis Partners, says, "Many banks know that they should be building powerful e-trading platforms, but it is expensive and demands a huge investment in infrastructure and technology."

UBS and Deutsche Bank, with Autobahn FX, were both early movers in building e-FX platforms, which continue to win awards for electronic foreign exchange trading.