Symphony Communication Services (Symphony) and AccessFintech today announced a partnership to extend data sharing, communications and workflow collaboration across their platforms.  

The partnership combines Symphony’s collaboration and communication platform with AccessFintech’s data management and workflow network solution to expedite the resolution of discrepancies such as trade fails and mismatches in the post-trade environment.  

Regulations such as CSDR in Europe, new risk management controls and an expanding partner-firm ecosystem add complexity to exception management resolution. Enriching AccessFintech’s workflow with Symphony’s communication platform further empowers operations professionals to expedite the resolution of trade exceptions with greater ease and efficiency. 

“We believe there is tremendous value in a joint proposition with AccessFintech,” said Brad Levy, President and Chief Commercial Officer, Symphony. Levy continued, “Our companies share a similar mission to enable more seamless collaboration and information flow across the financial community and this partnership furthers that objective.”  

An estimated 6% of trades fail and resolving exceptions is highly inefficient, forcing institutions to reserve capital on their balance sheets for incomplete and open positions. To help solve this, AccessFintech’s data management and workflow solution integrates with Symphony’s secure communication platform and trusted user directory of over half a million financial services professionals. Informed by details including role/function, title and location, Symphony’s directory expedites identifying and connecting with ecosystem participants for exception resolution.

Commenting on the partnership with Symphony, CEO of AccessFintech Roy Saadon said, “Financial markets have reached a point where participants are ready to co-operate meaningfully with each other, in a way that was unthinkable a few years ago. Our partnership with Symphony demonstrates that spirit of collaboration, both between us and amongst our clients. Cloud based collaborative working is here. Operating securely and seamlessly, the partnership with Symphony will drive efficiencies and reduce friction and risk across the trade lifecycle.”

Symphony’s collaboration and messaging platform was built for the needs of the financial services industry, with over 470 companies worldwide. The platform allows users and applications to share information in a secure and compliant way. In 2020, the company saw record growth with a 32% increase in monthly active users, and over 60 million messages sent every month, solidifying Symphony’s position as one of the world’s largest communities in financial services.

AccessFintech has created a network of participants sharing financial data and standardising workflows. Market participants use the network to collaborate on exception resolution, distribute data and onboard vendors to create a complete ecosystem for data and workflow management. Since launch, AccessFintech has already gone live with 5 financial products and is in proof-of-concept or live testing with another 6 products. The collaboration ecosystem has the participation of more than 85 of the leading global banks and broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers and has created workflow partnerships with industry vendors and peers. Settlement message volumes on the AccessFintech network have grown exponentially. Over the past 6 months there has been a 2.5 x volume increase, reaching 700 million a month in January 2021.