FOW Awards for Innovation Part 2: banks, brokers and IT firms

Today and tomorrow, Futures and Options Intelligence will be publishing the results of the final stages of FOW's Awards for Innovation 2009.

Like the Awards for Exchanges, Clearing Houses and Law Firms we published in November, these Awards recognise not the best firms in particular sectors, but specific innovations that have improved the futures and options markets.

This time, there are just two awards – one for the Best Innovation by a Bank, Broker or Futures Commission Merchant in the Field of Customer Service, and one for the Best Innovation by an IT or Software Company.

We kept these until last because they were the most hotly contested, with a large number of entries, putting considerable demands on our panel of judges – all senior derivatives professionals around the world.

And because of the strong field for each award, we have published not just the winners, but the second and third-placed innovations as well.

FOW would like to thank our expert judges, who lent their time and expertise so generously, and all the firms that entered for the Awards, many of which produced impressive innovations that won support from several judges, but just not enough to win.

Also, we thank the two market participants who nominated innovations by third party companies that had impressed them. We then contacted those companies and invited them to apply – and both of those innovations ended up finishing in the top three.

The Award for Best Innovation by a Bank, Broker or Futures Commission Merchant in the Field of Customer Service will be published this afternoon; the Award for Best Innovation by an IT or Software Company will come tomorrow.