Deutsche Bank AG is making use of an XML conversion engine that allows it to send Portable Document Format (PDF) files of investment models to institutional investment clients -- giving the New York arm of the Frankfurt-based investment bank at least a six-month jump on its competitors, according to one analyst.

"It"s something that definitely could be used by any fixed-income desks for clients, and I think you"re going to see more and more of that, with dealers sharing investment models with their most favorite clients," said Damon Kovelsky, a technical markets analyst at Financial Insights in Framingham, Mass. Although Deutsche Bank has an early lead on other investment banks in using the spreadsheet-to-XML conversion engine, "once catch-up occurs, it will happen very quickly, within six months," he said.

Deutsche Bank began using the XL2Web Publisher conversion engine from New York-based 2Web Technologies about a year ago, says Jed Evans, head of emerging markets analytics at the bank.

"This product allows us to take a spreadsheet, run it through the conversion engine and make it possible for customers to access all of the Deutsche libraries," Evans said. The XL2Web Publisher, which Deutsche Bank runs on a Linux operating system, "reduces our costs and allows us to develop things much faster for the needs of our clients."

Deutsche Bank paid US$75,000 for a corporate license to use the XL2Web Publisher, plus another $30,000 to integrate its data libraries into the system, said Jonathan Rochelle, CEO of 2Web Technologies. While Evans declined to disclose the return on investment Deutsche Bank has obtained from using XL2Web Publisher, he did say that the bank had converted roughly 10 investment models for clients using the system.

"You could develop things in a tenth of the time and at a tenth of the cost using this system," Evans said.