The Challenge
A one-stop shop that bankers weren't stopping at
Market Monitor was JPMorgan's answer to tool fragmentation in capital markets — a platform designed to consolidate market intelligence, deal data, and client insights into a single experience. The vision was compelling. The reality was that bankers kept flipping back to Bloomberg, NIBP, FactSet, and Excel the moment Market Monitor didn't have exactly what they needed.
The product team needed to understand not just what features were missing, but why adoption had stalled despite meaningful investment. What would it take to make Market Monitor the first screen bankers opened — not the third?
Research Brief
Understand how capital markets bankers use Market Monitor in their daily workflow, identify the friction points driving tool-switching, and surface the feature gaps and trust barriers preventing full adoption.
Research Approach
Going deep with the people who live in the data
The study used 60-minute 1:1 interviews to go beyond surface-level feedback and understand how bankers actually structure their day. Participants spanned Leveraged Finance, Investment Grade, and ECM — covering the breadth of use cases that Market Monitor needed to serve.
DCM — Leveraged Finance
2 bankers covering LF deals — high focus on trading levels, loan tracking, and soft call monitoring
DCM — Investment Grade
2 bankers covering IG — primary need for spread-based views and issuer-level bond lists
ECM
Group session with ECM banker and Associates/Analysts — broader scope including equity story and strategic client conversations
Each session covered four focus areas:
Synthesis focused on direct quotes and actionable feedback — keeping banker language intact rather than abstracting it away, so product teams could hear the frustration in their own words.
Key Findings
Six themes, one consistent story
Every banker interviewed wanted to use fewer tools. Every banker was still using five. The findings explained why — and pointed clearly to what would need to change.
Bankers want personalization and customization
One-size-fits-all is no fit at all
- Bankers want to tailor dashboards and workflows to their own coverage, sector, and seniority
- The ability to create, save, and reuse watchlists, comp sets, and widgets is highly valued
- MDs, VPs, and analysts all surface different information — the platform needs to flex for each
"Let me curate my own initial dashboard list. I want to open up a dashboard and see the macro picture, the spreads on my clients, and the latest pricings. I want to pick and choose what's relevant to me, not just what someone else decided is important."
— Yannan, DCM Banker
Bankers expect automation and actionable insights
Not raw data — intelligence that tells them what to do next
- Bankers want the system to proactively surface opportunities, risks, and relevant changes
- Automated alerts and AI-driven recommendations are highly desired over passive data displays
- Actionable insights (e.g., "this client's bond is trading above par") far outweigh static data dumps
"If there was a way for me to be more efficient — be it Market Monitor or potentially LLM Suite — I could start my day, get three ideas, and in five minutes create really good touch points with clients. Right now, I have to hunt for those opportunities myself."
— Renaud, DCM Banker
Automation should free up juniors for higher-value work
The job is shifting — the platform needs to shift with it
- Junior bankers spend significant time on manual data gathering and first-draft production
- Better automation should shift their focus to idea generation, client engagement, and strategic thinking
- This serves both efficiency and professional development goals
"It should be more about checking the work versus producing the first version. The job is changing — it's going to be more like fact-checking and knowing where to spot mistakes, not just pulling data from Bloomberg or Excel."
— Tanpreet, DCM Banker
Bankers juggle multiple tools to get the data they need
Fragmentation is the default — and it's costly
- Bankers routinely combine Market Monitor, Bloomberg, FactSet, NIBP, and Excel in a single workflow
- Each tool fills a specific gap that the others don't address
- Context-switching increases the risk of missing information and slows down prep considerably
"I use all three sources to get to the data points I need. I would probably be more on Market Monitor if it had all those features, but right now I'm toggling between FactSet for the daily brief, Bloomberg for deal data, and Market Monitor for a broad market summary. It's a lot of windows open at once."
— Tanpreet, DCM Banker
Inconsistent experience pushes bankers back to other tools
When the UX breaks down, trust breaks down with it
- Bankers expect seamless, predictable behaviour across all features and data types
- Inconsistencies in navigation, data presentation, or feature availability create confusion
- When the UX is fragmented, bankers revert to familiar tools even if those are less efficient overall
"If I go on the transactions tab and look for the same name, I'll have a different look and feel compared to the search bar. It's confusing, and when I can't find what I need quickly, I just go back to the old way — NIBP or even Excel."
— Yannan, DCM Banker
Trust in data quality and timeliness drives adoption
Bankers are loyal to what they know works — full stop
- Bankers are loyal to tools that have proven reliable and accurate over time
- Even if a new platform offers more features, users won't switch unless data is consistently up-to-date
- A single data delay or error can erase months of goodwill and push users back to legacy systems
"If I find something that actually has good data quality, I kind of stick with it for a while until someone really proves to me it's accurate and up to speed. That's why I still use NIBP for trading levels, even though I know Market Monitor is supposed to have the same data. I just trust what I know works."
— Ryan, DCM Banker
Market Monitor — Deal Opportunity View (Concept Mockup)
Concept mockup illustrating the deal opportunity discovery experience discussed in research sessions.
The Tool Fragmentation Problem
What bankers were using — and why
Every tool in a banker's stack existed because Market Monitor didn't yet fully cover that use case. Understanding this landscape was critical to prioritizing what the platform needed to absorb first.
| Tool | Primary use | Why they still need it | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market Monitor | Macro overview, in-market calendar, deal stats | Missing personalization; inconsistent UX; trust gaps | Platform in question |
| Bloomberg | Trading levels, deal data, historical price charts | Deep trust from years of reliable data; keyboard-first UX | Overlap / gap |
| FactSet | Daily brief, financial modeling | More comprehensive financials; trusted data freshness | Overlap / gap |
| NIBP | Trading levels, bond data, known UX | Familiarity; bankers know exactly what it does and doesn't do | Overlap / gap |
| Excel | Custom modeling, comps, deal tracking | Full flexibility; no platform constraint; always available | Workaround |
A Typical Banker's Morning — Tool Fragmentation
Recommendations
Five directions to earn the switch
The research pointed to five concrete areas where product investment would have the greatest impact on adoption and trust — prioritized by frequency of mention and business impact.
Build personalized, role-aware experiences
Let bankers curate their own dashboards — selecting the widgets, watchlists, and data views relevant to their coverage and seniority. What matters to an IG MD is fundamentally different from what an ECM analyst needs at 7am. A single default layout serves no one well.
Surface actionable insights, not just data
Move beyond passive data display to proactive, contextual intelligence. Automated alerts for deal opportunities — a bond trading above par, a loan approaching its soft call window, a repricing candidate — should arrive before bankers go looking for them.
Reduce reliance on multiple tools by expanding core data coverage
Every tool in a banker's stack exists because of a gap. Prioritize completing the 70% of workflows Market Monitor already covers — doing them at 100% — before expanding scope. Consistent depth on core use cases (comps, search, trading levels) will drive consolidation more than new features.
Invest in data quality and timeliness as a trust foundation
Bankers won't switch platforms if they can't trust the data. Prioritize real-time data enrichment and verification — especially for deal launches, where a multi-hour delay forces bankers to answer client questions using other sources. Trust, once broken, is very slow to rebuild.
Create a consistent, dense, keyboard-navigable experience
Bankers think in data density — they want maximum information in minimum clicks, not aesthetic whitespace. Prioritize consistent navigation patterns across all sections of the platform, and support keyboard-first interaction for power users who spend their entire day in the tool.
Impact
Research that shaped the roadmap
Product Strategy
Findings directly informed Market Monitor's roadmap prioritization — shifting focus toward data quality, personalization, and actionable alerting
Stakeholder Alignment
Executive summary presented to senior GIB Digital product leadership, anchoring strategy conversations in direct banker voice rather than assumptions
Deal Discovery
Banker articulation of deal opportunity needs (repricings, block trades, soft call tracking) defined the feature requirements for the deal opportunity module
Cross-Team Input
Research insights shared with GIB Tech, LLM Suite, and onboarding teams — extending the value of a single research effort across multiple product initiatives
Role Segmentation
Surfaced clear distinctions between ECM, IG, and LevFin needs — informing a role-aware product strategy that treated user personas as first-class design constraints
Foundation for ECM Research
Banker Experience research established the research infrastructure and stakeholder trust that made the deeper ECM journey mapping study possible