Reuters unveils new banking product

By Our Special Correspondent

MUMBAI, AUG. 29. Accessing Internet in India may ``take some time'' - meaning it is slow - as Reuters Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Philip Green says, but Indian banks have shown that they can be at the forefront of using Internet based technology to improve their edge in the international banking operations.

Already, ICICI Bank has begun using the Reuters new multifunctional workstation for its forex operations. The other bank is an international bank operating here,'' Mr. Green told a news conference here.

Mr. Green and his team is in India with two purposes: One, focus on this new workstation called Dealing 3000 Direct to draw all users of its earlier platform and transaction system and two, celebrate the 150 years of Reuters which has been in India since 1861, starting here ``in a tent on a beach since no premises was available.''

Indian banks, Mr. Green said, ``were grasping new technology quite quickly'' and they ``were actually on the forefront'' in this regard.

There is a realisation among them which Reuters backed : unless they become tuned, efficiency in the international financial market place without Internet-driven products would be elusive in the liberalised era.

The Dealing 3000 Direct is a platform that meets banker and foreign exchange traders, by allowing them up to 26 conversations simultaneously from a desktop enhancing functional efficiency that can enable them to take more fine positions in the forex market.

It is easier to create deal tickets with such versatile features.

More than a quarter of the old transaction systems worldwide have been upgraded to this new workstation and about 80 per cent of the 150 such users ``are targeted to swap to the latest,'' Reuters officials said at the press conference, ``within the year.

The balance would be by the first quarter of 2002.''

When dealing with this real time operations that content, technology and connectivity has enabled, Mr. Green did make a point : while news collection and disemmination continues to be part of its business, Reuters is always looking forward to develop new options for the clients worldwide but despite the Internet, he did not foresee a day when ``newspapers would become paperless.''

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Section  : Business
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