Fortis Comes Back to RMDS

BRUSSELS—Fortis, the Benelux-based financial services provider, is coming back to Reuters after it decided to use a market data distribution platform from the former Telerate back in 2004.

In fact, Fortis is deploying Reuters 3000 Xtra on 750 desktops as well as the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS), officials tell DWT. Out of the 750 Xtra positions, 600 will be for the foreign exchange (FX) dealing room, and 150 will be divided among the energy, commodity and equity desks at Fortis. The deployment is global, with Benelux switching first, followed by France, the U.K., Spain, the U.S. and Asia.

Fortis will be switching from the Telerate Trading Room System (TRS) to the RMDS platform in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. "We are expecting the RMDS platform to be rolled out in May or June of this year," says Nick Slater, Reuters director of special projects for Benelux.

The RMDS deal will also be expanded to other countries, according to Reuters and Fortis. "We will replace all existing Telerate platforms worldwide outside of the Benelux in early 2007," Slater says. Reuters announced its intention to acquire Telerate in 2004.

The deal is divided into two contracts, one for the RMDS platform, which runs until Sept. 2009, and another two-year contract for the Reuters 3000 Xtra positions. "Since the 3000 Xtra positions are connected to the RMDS platform, their contracts are also linked," says Slater.

In 2004, Fortis announced it was standardizing Telerate's TRS instead of migrating to RMDS (DWT, Sept. 27, 2004). The five-year deal saw the bank migrate a mix of disparate platforms that were used in multiple locations to a single TRS infrastructure in 2005 to serve 700 positions, including the bank's equities, foreign exchange (FX), money market and derivatives traders. This previous deal also included the replacement of some Reuters market data terminals with Telerate's Active8 front-end running against TRS.

Back in 2004, Fortis was in the middle of a two-year project dubbed Fortis Informa tion Providing System (FIPS) to implement a single market data platform. Previously, the bank has used: Reuters' TIB and Triarch platforms for its Brussels trading rooms, Triarch and an older version of TRS in Amsterdam, and TRS in Luxembourg.

At that time, Cor Breur, head of the market data competence center at Fortis, told DWT that the bank was confident that it had safeguarded the provision of the Telerate products within the terms of its contract, so that if Reuters did buy Telerate, the products were unlikely to be discarded in the short-term (DWT, Sept. 27, 2004).

Late last year, Reuters began pushing for an exodus from TRS. TRS users have the option to upgrade to RMDS or—for those who do not need all the RMDS functions—to switch to a terminal installation. TRS users have until the end of 2006 to choose either option, says Kyle Arteaga, global head of marketing communications, enterprise solutions at Reuters. "Reuters sent them letters announcing that the TRS product will be obsolete, and that we won't be developing on it anymore," he said (DWT, Nov. 7, 2005).

Breur says that this announcement had an impact on Fortis' decision to come back to Reuters. "We felt we had to switch to Reuters," Breur says.

Slater says he hopes the deal will lead to more Reuters sales to Fortis but Breur says there are no plans for additional purchases at this time.