Surecomp^®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporations, announced today that IMEX^®, its high-volume back-office trade finance solution for banks, has been award the “SWIFT Certified Application – Trade Finance” label for a 17^th consecutive year.

The SWIFT Certified program provides accreditation to companies that provide various SWIFT-related services and solutions to end customers. SWIFT checks compliance with relevant quality criteria and standards, and awards SWIFT Certified labels for qualifying applications and specialists. SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its business operations with speed, certainty and confidence.

“We are proud that IMEX – for 17 years running – has once again received SWIFT accreditation following a rigorous evaluation process. SWIFT certification confirms our ongoing commitment to meeting industry standards and keeping IMEX at the forefront of trade finance processing,” said Joel Koschitzky, Surecomp Chairman. “We will continue to work hard to ensure that IMEX remains the number one trade finance system for discerning banks with high volumes of trade finance transactions.”

CSC, which currently serves over 100 banking and financial services clients in 15 countries, will provide its core banking, cards, payments and default management industry software and product development expertise to the venture. HCL, which draws 25% of its revenue from the banking sector, will provide capital investment, experience in product engineering and application implementation services, as well as banking sales and client engagement expertise.

“The banking industry is taking bold steps toward cloud deployments and digital integration with surrounding applications and platforms,” says Anant Gupta, president & CEO, HCL Technologies. “Many of our banking clients are looking for modernization of their legacy platforms while simultaneously managing the increasing demands for data analytics services, multi-channel deployments, and increasing regulatory compliance requirements. The joint entity with CSC is designed to meet those critical demands with new and innovative solutions and to expedite the modernization transformation journey of our banking clients.”

CSC is likely to be the lead partner in the venture, drawing on its experience in the market with its Hogan core banking platform and CAMS card management suite. 

The company is led by Mike Lawrie, who spent five years turning around Misys before quitting to join CSC as the UK core banking supplier company entered an - ultimately aborted - merger agreement with Swiss rival Temenos.

Path Solutions announces today that Sudanese Egyptian Bank (SEB) has successfully completed the implementation of iMAL Islamic core banking system across its operations in 7 retail branches.

The iMAL solution, which was chosen to replace SEB’s legacy outsourced system, will now accelerate the growth of its retail banking business and further enhance its customer experience.

SEB’s management wanted to maintain its competitive edge in the Sudanese market and ensure that it is using a true Sharia-compliant core banking system. The bank selected iMAL Islamic Banking & Investment System over a number of international core banking systems. This selection granted SEB a rapid implementation of less than 6 months covering the following business areas; Branch Automation, Financing Application Management, Retail Financing, Corporate Financing, Trade Financing, Provisioning, Treasury operations, Central Bank Reporting, along with data migration and interfaces with Credit Bureau and ATM.

“The very fast and successful project completion is testament to Path Solutions’ breadth of knowledge and experience in this segment”, stated Sami Hussein Alrakha, Head of Information Technology at SEB. “We are confident that using iMAL, we will be able to launch innovative Islamic banking products and services to market quickly - something that used to take months of development with the previous core banking system. We will also be able to tailor and modify business processes to our exact requirements, significantly improving operational efficiency”.

Path Solutions was chosen for its proven project management and deployment methodology, rapid implementation successes and the experience of working closely with other Islamic financial institutions in Sudan such as Bank of Khartoum, United Capital Bank, Financial Investment Bank, Arab Sudanese Bank and Al Baraka Bank Sudan.   

Jacob Zachariah Karuvelil, Executive Vice President, Global Professional Services & Global Support, Path Solutions, commented, “It was a particularly delicate situation whereby we had to replace SEB’s old outsourced system within a short timeframe. For an existing full-fledged Islamic bank operating with 7 retail branches, failing to overcome this challenge would be disastrous. Our team managed to deploy the new core banking system seamlessly, with no interruption to daily operations”. He then explained, “Despite a major delay in receiving the data extracted from a third party, we managed to alter our migration approach and tools in order to accommodate this delay and succeeded in migrating all the needed data to our core banking system. We look forward to continuing to work closely alongside SEB as they expand their business rapidly and stay ahead of the market”.

Path Solutions has a well-defined migration path to its iMAL clients and it prioritizes quality and delivery which enables Islamic financial institutions to give true value-added services to their clientele in a relatively short time.

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Surecomp^®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporations, announced today that DOKA 5^®, its configurable bank back-office solution for documentary trade finance, hasbeen awarded the “SWIFT Certified Application – Trade Finance” label for a 15th consecutive year.

The SWIFT Certified program provides accreditation to companies that provide various SWIFT-related services and solutions to end customers. SWIFT checks compliance with relevant quality criteria and standards, and awards SWIFT Certified labels for qualifying applications and specialists. SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its business operations with speed, certainty and confidence.

“This latest accreditation by SWIFT reaffirms the status of DOKA 5 as a cutting-edge back-office solution for banks that need to improve trade finance throughput while cutting costs,” said Joel Koschitzky, Surecomp Chairman. “We are pleased that DOKA 5 has earned SWIFT certification for 15 years in a row, and will continue to invest in DOKA 5 for the benefit of our banking customers in the years ahead.”

Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) today announced that it has been named Best Sell-side Order Management System (OMS) Provider at the prestigious 13th annual Waters Rankings awards. Voted for by the rank and file of the financial markets industry, the awards were presented today at a gala lunch at The Metropolitan Club in New York.

Mark Ames, Global Head of Equities at Fidessa, reacted to the award, saying: "We are honored by this recognition from the financial markets industry itself. It is always good to receive an accolade like this that is based on votes from people within the community. We are also delighted to see that our ongoing investment in our sell-side services is bearing fruit. We have delivered a number of innovative new capabilities to our product suite over the last year and have further exciting developments in the pipeline. All of this will ensure that we continue to provide the functionality, service and performance our clients need and retain our position as the leading supplier in the industry."

In the post-financial crisis world, brokers are increasingly having to stand out from the crowd by offering their buy-side clients exceptional value and unparalleled levels of service. Fidessa’s sell-side trading platform provides them with the technology they need to do just that. Technology that improves margins and boosts profitability by cutting costs and improving efficiency. Technology that effectively manages, presents and interprets the vast amount of data that's now available. And technology that mitigates risk, improves transparency and promotes active compliance.

Fidessa supports more than 24,000 users across 1,000 clients around the world. The Fidessa network provides connectivity to 4,100 buy-sides and 870 brokers across over 200 markets globally. Each month, the network carries flow with a value of more than US$1.6 trillion.

 Thomson Reuters has today announced that it has expanded its Elektron Direct Feed service to include the Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA).  This provides customers with high-performance access to real-time options data with a low hardware footprint.

Financial services firms are increasing their investment in low-latency feeds as speed is becoming less of a differentiator and more a core component of market data infrastructure.  This can create a challenge, however, as many are at the same time looking to reduce their total cost of ownership.  Feeds from OPRA in particular can present server capacity – and therefore investment – challenges owing to the amount of data they carry.

Elektron Direct Feed was launched by Thomson Reuters in August 2014 to help address this challenge.  As a hardware/software hybrid based on FPGA technology, it can run multiple feeds on a single server whilst providing a reliable, deterministic and configurable feed.  Elektron Direct Feed delivers the content its users require whilst also accommodating current and future update rates, all the while minimising costly server footprint expansion.

“This extension of our direct feed service to cover key US options data is part of our ongoing process to provide customers with the data they need in the latency profile and delivery mechanism that suits them,” said Mike Powell, managing director for enterprise capabilities, Financial & Risk, at Thomson Reuters.  “As market participants continue to keep a tight focus on cost whilst seeking the flexibility to go after new opportunities, we will maintain our own focus on finding new solutions to our clients’ market data challenges.”

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, announced today it has been appointed by the Hong Kong Treasury Markets Association (TMA) as the calculating agent for the TMA RMB Bond Indicative Quotes. The indicative quotes aim at increasing the price transparency for RMB-denominated institutional bonds issued in Hong Kong by the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China.  The publication of the indicative quotes will be conducive to strengthening Hong Kong’s position as a leading offshore RMB center.

The indicative quotes offer market participants including fund managers, sell-side banks and brokers a reference for various uses, such as portfolio valuation and compliance reporting.

Thomson Reuters will use its leading technology to perform the calculation of the indicative quotes based on the indicative prices sourced from 14 regional and global banks.

The indicative quotes will be published twice a day (around 11am and 4pm HKT) on every trading day via Thomson Reuters Eikon and datafeed solutions. The 11am indicative quotes will also be published on the TMA website.  Further information on the initiative can be found at https://www.tma.org.hk/en_market_info.aspx.

“The TMA RMB Bond Indicative Quotes will provide a reliable source for pricing which will increase transparency within the financial marketplace, something Thomson Reuters continues to be very focused on,” said Stuart Brown, Head of Financial, Asia, Thomson Reuters.

Thomson Reuters delivers up-to-the-millisecond news and financial information to decision makers and has a strong  portfolio of benchmarks and indices. It administers, calculates and distributes financial benchmarks on behalf of more than 50 market associations and central banks as well as produces Thomson Reuters indices covering equities, bonds, and commodities.

Finansinvest, based in Istanbul, Turkey, has adopted SunGard’s Front Arena trading solution, which will help the firm source and trade liquidity at the right price in multiple asset classes. SunGard’s multi-asset trading solution will help Finansinvest gain a competitive edge in pricing and risk management, market making on the Turkish stock exchange, trade and execution management, cross-asset trading, over-the-counter (OTC) electronic trading, and order management.

Finansinvest’s implementation of SunGard’s Front Arena trading solution is the first in Turkey. SunGard is one of the world’s leading financial software companies, with revenue in 2014 of $2.8bn. The company has also established an office in Istanbul and is set to add new hires to the local team.

Turkey’s growth over the past decade has made the country an extremely attractive investment proposition, which in turn has seen the further development of its financial services industry. Its economy is now the 18^th largest in the world, and foreign direct investment has gone from around $1bn ten years ago to an average of $13bn over the past five years. [Source: World Bank, 2015] 

Ozgur Guneri, CEO of Finansinvest, said: “At FinansInvest, our mission is to offer sophisticated and integrated solutions to our clients along with high quality and dedicated financial advisors. On this mission, we aim to explore the highest level of technology and innovation which enables us to offer a trusted, transparent and convenient investment platform. We believe that our cooperation with SunGard will be a key milestone in helping us gain a competitive advantage on this front. By implementing SunGard’s Front Arena, we are well-poised for growth and look forward to a long and rewarding association with SunGard.”

Wissam Khoury, managing director for SunGard in the Middle East & Africa, said: “We are very happy to be working with Finansinvest. Opportunities in the growing Turkish market are plentiful and we are now actively pursuing further expansion in the country by investing locally and hiring new people on the ground. Our investment is bringing customers added value by utilizing our solutions to help them compete more effectively.

“Recent regulatory changes in Turkey gave investment banks the opportunity to provide OTC derivative products to their clients more easily. We were able to provide Finansinvest with a smooth transition process to enable them to cope with these regulatory changes.

“There is a gap in the market for the type of solutions we offer, allowing SunGard to become a trusted, long-term technology provider of Turkish financial institutions and to contribute to the development of Turkish capital markets. It is an exciting time for us to be active in Turkey.”