JP Morgan has gone live with a London Stock Exchange-hosted communications platform that is designed to increase operational efficiency and fully meet compliance demands.

JP Morgan is using the LSE's UnaVista Swaps Portal in Europe, which will provide it with a central and audited communication channel to connect to its client community using standard message formats.

UnaVista's Swaps Portal can be used for any trade on any global market, while maintaining a complete audit trail for the trade.

Teresa Heitsenrether, European prime brokerage head at JP Morgan, said: "We welcome the opportunity to work with our client and broker communities to bring efficiencies to this market, and significantly lower its inherent risks."

UnaVista Swaps Portal enables firms to automate communication at all stages of the equity swaps process, including orders, allocations and give-ups. The platform can normalise, validate and match all of the data automatically and employs strict data segregation to ensure all compliance rules are met.

UnaVista accepts data in all standard formats, including SWIFT, FIX, flat files and email.

JP Morgan Chase recently said it was overhauling business processes, improving product development and slashing the costs of trading, as part of a major initiative. The bank said it was implementing global trading and asset servicing platforms and investing heavily in fast-growing areas such as mobile payments.

Almost three quarters of financial services firms across the world are expected to spend more on IT over the next two years, according to research. The International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC), the industry trade group focused on standards in transaction processing, polled executives from leading investment managers, broker/dealers and vendors for its annual member survey.