Crédit Agricole CIB, the corporate and investment banking arm of the French bank has partnered with Silicon Valley-based Orchestrade Financial Systems, a capital markets technology platform for cross-asset trading and risk management, in a move to replace its trading and risk legacy systems and overhaul its interest rate derivatives and FX forwards trading operations.

Crédit Agricole CIB is migrating all front-to-middle office processing of vanilla and structured products from two legacy platforms. The bank will now run trading and real-time risk calculations on Orchestrade for its interest rates and FX forwards business globally.

There are almost 3,000 structured products issued by Credit Agricole CIB listed on SRP database of which 264 are still live. Credit Agricole’s top three markets in terms of issuance are France, Italy, and Japan. The French bank has also 13 live structured notes in the US market. In France, Credit Agricole finished third in the 2016 issuers ranking behind Societe Generale and BNP Paribas with 31 products issued but was the highest seller with the overall 2016 sales volume standing at €2.1bn.

"Orchestrade enabled us to improve risk performance, keep up with new regulatory changes and reduce costs, while ensuring that Crédit Agricole CIB remains at the cutting edge of banking innovation," said Thomas Spitz, global head of the trading division at Crédit Agricole CIB, in a statement. "Orchestrade platform is modern and well-designed. This partnership sets a new benchmark for capital markets technology projects inside the bank, enabling us to deliver even greater value to our shareholders."

Hakim Erhili, CEO of Orchestrade said that having established a track record with fund managers, "it was a natural step for us to partner with an investment bank", and that the platform will deliver "unmatched performance and operational efficiency, regardless of scale".

Post-implementation, the bank will increase efficiency, real-time risk capabilities as well as one umbrella platform covering front- and middle-office functions such as sales, trading, risk and operations.

The announcement follows a cooperation agreement in the area of structured investment products whereby Crédit Agricole CIB will deploy Leonteq's technology to customise and distribute structured products to its client network.

The cooperation with Leonteq is aimed at leveraging the Swiss firm's automated platform in the area of custom investment products to accelerate time-to-market for the benefit of its clients, and addressing challenges in the current competitive environment around service quality, productivity and adherence to evolving regulation.

In a panel discussion at SRP's 14th Annual European Structured Products & Derivatives Conference in London, earlier this month, Sami Beji (pictured), global head of structuring at Credit Agricole CIB, said that despite the different interest and business models the market is adopting a more pragmatic when it comes to selling structured products.

Credit Agricole CIB is in the process of rebuilding its equity derivatives business after withdrawing from 'certain activities' and selling its €12.5bn portfolio of equity derivatives notional to BNP Paribas Global Equities and Commodity Derivatives (GECD) in 2013.

The French bank is also expanding the scope of the products offered to its clients as part of the structured products redeployment. The revamped business will deploy the bank's pricing and risk management technology, but there is no intention 'to open or white-label' its platform externally. CACIB has been focusing on rebuilding its structured products capabilities over the last couple of years, on the back of its Strategic Equity Transactions business, which has continued offering structured solutions and equity financings via products indexed to certain underlyings, such as rates as well as a bond repack platform and secured funding.

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