Best user interface innovation
Designing for control and privacy
The innovation lies not simply in automation but in the design philosophy behind it. Beta One is structured as a self-service environment that gives clients control over portfolio construction, pricing and optimisation. Users can upload portfolios containing as many as 1,800 bonds across investment-grade and high-yield segments in dollars and euros, then price them instantly using J.P. Morgan’s proprietary models. In an asset class where dealer intermediation has long been central to every stage of the trade, this approach represents a significant shift in agency. It allows asset managers, pension funds and other institutional investors to explore and refine trading strategies independently, iterating and validating scenarios before engaging directly with the bank.
At the heart of the platform is a visualisation engine designed to make complex market data accessible and actionable. Clients can view their portfolios line by line, generate configurable charts and run backtests to assess performance or replication against ETFs. Beta One’s Basket Builder and ETF-replication tools allow users to set portfolio objectives – such as yield, spread or liquidity – and generate optimised baskets or replicate any of 20 widely traded credit ETFs with a single command.
These features turn what was once a day-long, manual task into a streamlined digital workflow, enabling clients to adapt to changing market conditions and pursue ideas dynamically. “We’re turning hours into minutes,” Kharaud notes. “Clients can ideate in a private, sandboxed environment, with realistic indications of pricing and liquidity before they send anything to us.” The solution allows full lifecycle management alongside liquidity analysis, which judges cited as evidence of a well-thought-out and comprehensive offering.
The user interface was shaped by an intensive client-research process that included more than 45 interviews. Feedback guided every design decision, from navigation structure to data presentation, with the goal of enabling even first-time users to access sophisticated functionality without training. The emphasis on clarity and usability distinguishes Beta One from typical institutional trading systems, which often rely on layered menus and specialist knowledge. Here, the interface serves as a bridge between the bank’s internal infrastructure and the client’s decision-making process, presenting proprietary analytics and liquidity intelligence in a way that supports rather than overwhelms. On the interface, judges said: “It feels innovative and meets customer requirements, given the time reduction it creates for building portfolios.”
Privacy and data security were treated as fundamental design requirements. Beta One operates within a confidential sandbox that allows clients to explore J.P. Morgan’s liquidity and pricing data without revealing their portfolio composition. Only when a user chooses to request execution are details shared with the bank, ensuring that information remains protected throughout the exploratory phase. This model enables clients to experiment freely while maintaining control over sensitive holdings. Several clients described the model as “liberating” during testing, appreciating the ability to probe liquidity without disclosure. “Clients experiment and analyse privately, and share when they are ready to engage,” Kharaud says. “That element of privacy makes clients more confident. It gives them freedom to explore ideas without worrying about information leakage.
Market impact and efficiency gains
Beyond portfolio construction, Beta One incorporates a suite of proprietary analytics previously available only to the trading desk. Metrics such as JPM Fit %, which measures the overlap between a client’s portfolio and J.P. Morgan’s inventory, and JPM Liquidity, a relative liquidity score ranging from 1 to 100, provide a dealer-level view of market depth and execution quality. Integrating these indicators into the client interface gives users the ability to assess how their portfolios align with available liquidity, enhancing transparency and trade execution outcomes. The inclusion of real-time and historical performance data adds further context, allowing clients to monitor carry, risk and relative value within a single screen.
Judges praised the measurable impact. Since launch, the platform has become central to J.P. Morgan’s fixed income strategy. It has been adopted by more than 200 institutional clients across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and has priced more than 2,000 portfolios. Usage metrics cited by Kharaud provide a more granular picture: roughly 200 monthly active users over 500 portfolios built via the Basket Builder, and some 180 portfolios shared between clients since a recent sharing feature was introduced. The platform has supported several large non-comp transactions, underlining its practical market impact.
Internally, Beta One has streamlined how J.P. Morgan’s teams support clients. Previously, a single client enquiry could require co-ordination across multiple tools and teams to produce pricing and risk data; the new system automates those functions, enabling faster turnaround and more consistent communication. Automated pricing, digital enquiry tracking and embedded content delivery have reduced manual workloads and increased productivity across sales and trading desks. The platform also acts as a distribution channel for the bank’s research and market commentary, pushing thematic insights directly to users within the same environment they use to test and form trades.
Support now includes Market Monitor, a thematic content layer introduced in 2025, which exemplifies how the platform aims to seed ideas and guide client exploration. “We want clients to get ideas from us, to explore those ideas, run their own analyses and backtesting, and then execute when they are ready,” Kharaud says. “We’re still at the start of the journey, but the momentum is strong. The ambition is a one-stop hub for pre-trade. Our sales and traders have embraced these tools because they give them leverage. It creates efficiency for everyone in the chain.”
Tasks that previously required multiple iterations across sales and trading teams can now be completed within a single, continuous workflow. This efficiency enables clients to test multiple strategies in the time previously required for one, while the bank benefits from higher engagement and improved conversion rates. Beyond the immediate time savings, the platform has altered the tenor of client conversations. Where earlier discussions focused on the mechanics of pricing, they are now oriented towards execution strategy and portfolio construction choices. “Those early conversations have changed completely,” says Kharaud. “They’re no longer about basic calculations; they’re about how to execute ideas.
Expansion and innovation
Looking ahead, Beta One’s road map includes deeper integration across analysis, pricing, execution and post-trade workflows, as well as broader coverage across asset classes. Kharaud expects portfolio trading to become increasingly cross-asset, with demand for coverage extending into municipals, emerging markets and other debt universes. “Portfolio trading is definitely becoming more of a cross-asset tool,” he points out. “There will be room to extend the underlying coverage that we have today, as well as deepen the tools. We have ambitious plans and we’re committed to staying at the forefront.”
Crucially, Kharaud emphasises the collaborative nature of the build. The platform’s development draws on product, technology, sales and trading teams, with client input at every stage. “It’s a genuine partnership,” he says. “Technology is part of the front-office DNA here. Clients expect us to innovate – and that’s what drives us.”
Key points
J.P. Morgan
A smart piece of technology that tackles an obvious, complex and fragmented client-dealer interaction in a growing segment of the market
The solution allows full lifecycle management alongside liquidity analysis … evidence of a well-thought-out and comprehensive offering
The interface feels innovative and meets customer requirements, given the time reduction it creates for building portfolios
The Beta One platform has become central to J.P. Morgan’s fixed-income strategy. It has been adopted by more than 200 institutional clients … and has priced over 2,000 portfolios
“Portfolio trading is definitely becoming more of a cross-asset tool. There will be room to extend the underlying coverage that we have today, as well as deepen the tools. We have ambitious plans and we’re committed to staying at the forefront.”
Gurps Kharaud, Global head of equities digital markets at J.P. Morgan
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J.P. Morgan has re-engineered the client experience in credit portfolio trading through Beta One, an extension of its Vida Portfolio Solutions suite. The platform represents a major leap towards digitising credit trading – a market that has long lagged behind equities and other electronically traded markets. By creating an intuitive, self-directed interface for fixed income portfolio construction, J.P. Morgan has addressed one of the most persistent inefficiencies in credit trading: the reliance on fragmented, manual processes that hinder transparency, speed and scale. Judges described Beta One as a “smart piece of technology that tackles an obvious, complex and fragmented client-dealer interaction in a growing segment of the market”.
Building on Vida for credit
The Vida Portfolio Solutions suite has been part of J.P. Morgan’s offering since 2018, serving more than 1,000 institutional clients across five product lines, including quantitative investment strategies and equity delta one. Clients familiar with Vida’s capabilities in equities began asking for an equivalent tool in credit markets – a space in which portfolio trades had traditionally required long email chains, spreadsheet exchanges and multiple iterations between clients, sales teams and traders. “The ideation was shaped through extensive back and forth,” says Gurps Kharaud, global head of equities digital markets at J.P. Morgan. “You’d have objectives sent over in Excel, sales trying to match those objectives, and pricing then pushed across several desks. It could take a whole day to get a trade done.”
Each step required manual reconciliation and often disclosure of sensitive portfolio data before pricing or liquidity insights could be provided. For clients, this meant limited visibility and slow execution. For the bank, it created operational friction and scalability challenges. Those pressures intensified as portfolio trading volumes increased, fuelled by the growth of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index investing, and by broader advances in electronic trading. “When you look at the year-on-year trends, the growth is remarkable,” says Kharaud. According to the bank, investment-grade portfolio trading volumes have risen by roughly 20%, with portfolio trades now accounting for as much as 18% of total US investment-grade bond volumes.
Recognising that the existing structure could not support this shift, J.P. Morgan made a multimillion-dollar investment to design a platform that would digitise the process end to end. Over the course of nine months, a cross-functional team drawn from Digital Product, Quantitative Research, Automated Trading Strategies, User Experience and Technology collaborated to translate complex trading workflows into an intuitive digital experience. Beta One launched in November 2024 as a client-facing solution that enables users to move from idea to tradable strategy in under a minute – without compromising data integrity or analytical rigour.
Kharaud stresses that the platform was not conceived as a simple port of equity tools: it was an adaptation built on learned foundations. This rapid build was possible partly because the team had already solved foundational challenges in earlier builds. He pointed to the equities-facing Delta One tool and the bank’s quantitative investment strategies as providing core capabilities – including the technical plumbing and the user-centred design approach – which reduced development time and risk, making the credit extension feasible within an accelerated timeframe. “We addressed the foundational problems first – cross-asset connectivity, complex visualisation, intuitive analytics,” says Kharaud. “That meant we could adapt to credit in six to nine months rather than starting from scratch.”
“Portfolio trading is definitely becoming more of a cross-asset tool. There will be room to extend the underlying coverage that we have today, as well as deepen the tools. We have ambitious plans and we’re committed to staying at the forefront.”
Gurps Kharaud, Global head of equities digital markets at J.P. Morgan