About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

BNP Paribas Implements ipushpull’s PPQ to Digitise Pre-Trade Client Workflows

Subscribe to our newsletter

BNP Paribas has implemented PPQ (Pushpull Quotes) from London-based workflow and automation specialist ipushpull, to streamline workflows around non-standard, complex trades for asset manager clients.

PPQ is a pre-trade workflow tool that standardises and automates the negotiation process between buy and sell side through a set of integrated data sharing and data-driven tools, using financial networks like Symphony and standardised syntax within private bilateral chats. BNP Paribas has implemented the solution for its LDI and Rates business.

“We’re seeing an increasing trend of financial institutions who want to have a streamlined and optimised workflow, to give them better alignment with their clients so they can deliver a better client service,” says ipushpull CEO Matthew Cheung. “LDIs can be quite complex in terms of structures and products,” He says. “Streamlining the sales person’s workflow means they can handle more inquiries and do more business instead of manually typing chat messages and updating spreadsheets and sending them back and forth.”

The standardised PPQ syntax allows chatbots to interpret key data within messages, display them within a custom application, and drive the workflow from a single screen. The inclusion of structured data objects within messages, containing instrument definitions, event descriptions and other metadata, further aids automation of pre-trade workflow.

“Essentially you have a human-readable message, with a machine-readable message under the hood containing metadata related to that client and their pre-trade workflow,” says Cheung. “Users like BNP can take those messages and plug them straight into their internal systems. Whereas historically, the salesperson on the desk would have to manually source that information from an email or a chat, and copy/paste it into an internal system to get a price. This is much more efficient, and it’s all real-time.”

Since the Covid pandemic, firms have become much more interested in moving away from their historic ways of doing things, and there are various steps along that digital transformation route, says Cheung. “The first step is digitising the manual processes of file sharing and people typing into chat, and automating processes based on the machine-readable data. Then you can start bringing in some predictive analytics and machine learning based on the standardised messages going backwards and forwards. Ultimately, the trader and salesperson can be more detached from the admin side of doing the trades, and focus more on value-added activities.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: The future of market data – Harnessing cloud and AI for market data distribution and consumption

25 June 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes Market data is the lifeblood of trading, but as data volumes grow and real-time demands increase, traditional approaches to distribution and consumption are being pushed to their limits. Cloud technology and AI-driven solutions are rapidly transforming how financial institutions manage, process,...

BLOG

What to Expect at A-Team Group’s Second Buy AND Build Summit

On September 19th, Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology returns to London at the Marriott Hotel, Canary Wharf for its second year. This A-Team Group event offers a timely exploration of how financial institutions and technology providers can collaborate more effectively to modernise trading platforms and drive innovation. As firms increasingly transition...

EVENT

ESG Data & Tech Briefing London

The ESG Data & Tech Briefing will explore challenges around assembling and evaluating ESG data for reporting and the impact of regulatory measures and industry collaboration on transparency and standardisation efforts. Expert speakers will address how the evolving market infrastructure is developing and the role of new technologies and alternative data in improving insight and filling data gaps.

GUIDE

Institutional Digital Assets Handbook 2024

Despite the setback of the FTX collapse, institutional interest in digital assets has grown markedly in the past 12 months, with firms of all sizes now acknowledging participation in some form. While as recently as a year ago, institutional trading firms were taking a cautious stance toward their use, the acceptance of tokenisation, stablecoins, and...