Special		October 2006
Reza Habib	HBZ launches online forex trading Habib Bank AG Zurich (HBZ) has emerged as the first UAE bank to launch online foreign currency trading facilities for its customers. Reza Habib, HBZ's joint president, tells MONEYworks that orders from customers could be as small as US$5,000 per transaction.
	The launch of the online forex trading products from the technology driven bank comes on the back of its launch of online equity trading for the UAE and the US markets. Called HBZeFx, it comes at a time when the number of investors that want foreign currency as an asset class in their portfolio is increasing, including smaller investors given the volatility and the opportunity in the market. For small investors, until now, there were no locally based banks that offered real time online trading opportunities. They either had to contend with buying currency funds or had very limited options of physically banking, that too with large trade denominations.     Officials at HBZ explained that with HBZeFx, customers just have to securely log into their accounts and begin trading in currencies. It does not matter to the client who the liquidity provider is, since the bank has direct access to large liquidity providers. The customer can give an order, which will be executed automatically, while the bank	will do the risk management. All this will be done on a real time basis. If the customers buy spots, delivery into their accounts will be done on "T + 2" basis, which means trade day plus two days, they said. And all transactions can be monitored by the client in real-time using HBZ's event based messaging system and a wide range of delivery channels such as web, mobile PDA, etc over 3G, GPRS, WAP, WLAN, etc.     Habib explained that the most important parts of risk management are controlled through the STP based hPLUS SCREAM engine that the bank employs. He also added that the bank is the first in the world to offer a cell phone based challenge response authentication mechanism login security protocol, making it one of the most secure banking platforms for customers.     Significantly, HBZ charges a fee of AED120 per annum from customers for maintaining their accounts. For that amount, customers can have, apart from forex trading, equity trading in the US and the UAE, free fund transfer between accounts in the bank and a multitude of web and mobile based banking facilities. There is a
All for AED120 a year Real-time online broking for the US and UAE equity markets Facility to trade fixed income and equities in most markets over the phone Custody facilities for most securities in the world Access to families of mutual funds Capital protected structured products linked to interest rates, equities and commodities Equity and currency options Consolidated portfolio, including fixed income, equity, structured products and time deposits Competitive brokerage rates Free real time quotes on all major exchanges in the US Order execution notification instantly via SMS. HBZtrade customer can check for the settlement day Borrow against the shares purchased View all accounts (commercial, personal, fixed, call, foreign currencies, etc) in one screen through single log-in internet and mobile banking platform An HBZtrade account comes with free HBZeBanking services (including HBZweb, HBZpda and HBZgsm), apart from other standard products.		minimum balance requirement of AED5,000, though, and if the balance goes down below that, a monthly charge of AED50 is levied.     Habib said that one of the interesting aspects of the forex trading product is that a customer does not have to explicitly open multicurrency accounts to trade. There will be one base currency account from which he can operate, while his multicurrency assets will be managed automatically by the system.     He said today HBZ is one of leading banks in the UAE and the region when it comes to banking online. Currently 74 per cent of HBZ credit customers and 69 per cent of the bank's deposit customers are using its e-services. "We are now making greater efforts to speak to our clients to use our online facilities, as they offer a great proposition for them to be efficient with the way they bank," he added.
08/MONEYworks