Variety spice of online forex trading

Imagine: A foreign exchange market where you are able to trade with any foreign dealer via the internet at any time from anywhere at the price you want and with the privacy you need. And not just plain vanilla trades, but multi-products, like fixed income and interest rates. Imagine further, a system that takes your trade, which took a couple of seconds, and updates and recalculates your position in just a few more seconds. Your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is able to "talk" to the trading platform, thanks to standardized formats. And no need to worry about your credit line, or delivery of the foreign currency - straight through processing (STP) takes care of it.

Sound good? That was the vision painted by Irene Lim, manager of GMG e-Commerce and currency options specialist at Bank of America in Hong Kong. Speaking at a recent conference in Singapore, Lim sought to outline how banks should position themselves to compete for clients in online forex trading.