36 Rl WORLD
BANKING SPECIAL
Martin Tunstall
The success of TransAct illustrates that there is renewed
commitment to e-commerce at Rl. "Three years ago we
observed that we had to make an effort to keep up with our
competitors in the Dutch market," says Niels van Daatselaar,
who is in charge of e-commerce at GFM. "But at the moment
we are a bit ahead in that race. There are quite a few internal
challenges to get a project approved and moving, but once
the lights turn green we do move. Banks in general have a
serious lead time before projects get a go-ahead and I think
we could be a bit more effective in that area. We need to be
decisive to remain competitive."
Banks are competing against each other with their online
capabilities, explains Van Daatselaar. "Many corporate clients
take digital abilities into account when choosing banks.
Rabobank has a reputation as an innovative bank, so our
clients expect us to be ahead online. E-commerce is not just
an opportunity; it is alsoa necessity. Ifyou look at the retail
side, more than half of our customers are involved in online
banking. And we are seeing a similar development on the
wholesale side - a shift to the net. We could do more with
that shift. A lot of our flow business asks for lean and mean
transaction capabilities. If we were to execute all of our
transactions in the dealing room ourselves, we would need
five times the capacity we have now. Our ambition as GFM
e-commerce is to fundamentally change business processes
such as risk management and investments. We want to give
our clients new insights, so they can make informed decisions
about their risk exposures and investments."
At GFM in London, Martin Tunstall has experienced how
competing internet services affect the bank. "Five years ago all
large banks would promote their own portals with their own
I clients. Since then, electronic connectivity networks (ECNs)
have moved in as new middlemen in currency exchange.
Obviously, the large corporates and some of the large
institutions prefer to deal with those middlemen, as they give
a better overview of the market. Their service is free to the
corporates; participating banks pay brokerage fees. But if you
want to stay in this business, you have to join the ECNs."
One of the first ECNs was FXall. "Four years ago there were
some 60 banks connected. At that time Rabobank was still
pricing manually. It took us 60 seconds to respond. That was
in itself impressive, but competitors were doing the same
automatically. Our clients would see their automatic response
in two seconds, and ours one minute later. When you are last,
you have to make a better offer and even then the cliënt will
have most probably dealt within the first eight to 10 seconds.
As a result we were losing money, we were losing deals and
we were even losing customers."
Tunstall and his team at GFM developed eMarkets, working
closely with the respective trading desks. "Our platform is
available from Sunday evening until Friday evening, whenever
the markets are open. We support Foreign Exchange in 1136
