• White Papers
• 06.04.2015 08:00 pm

Allowance for Loans and Lease Losses (ALLL) is one of the most critical calculations for a bank and ALLL adequacy will continue to be an area of debate, inspection and elucidation.

 Convergex, an agency-focused global brokerage and trading related services provider, today announced the appointment of Ann Neidenbach as its new Chief Information Officer (CIO). Ms. Neidenbach is a well-known technology expert with more than twenty-five years of experience in the global financial services industry. 
 
“The financial industry continues to evolve at a very rapid pace requiring firms like ours to constantly introduce innovative new products and services to clients,” said Eric Noll, Convergex president and chief executive officer. “I have great confidence in Ann’s ability to help us shape and execute on a technology vision that supports our agency-focused brokerage business.”
 
In her role as CIO, Ms. Neidenbach will be responsible for Convergex’s software development, information services, business processes and technical infrastructure. She will also be a member of the company’s Executive Committee contributing to business strategy.
 
Prior to joining Convergex, Ms. Neidenbach was Senior Vice President of Market Systems at Nasdaq. In this role she led a team of expert architects and engineers developing and delivering innovative electronic trading, clearing, market data and index solutions. Earlier in her career, when she was first at Nasdaq, Ms. Neidenbach held other senior positions including SVP Global Products and Services and COO/CIO of Nasdaq Europe. Prior to Nasdaq, Ms. Neidenbach held senior positions at Citi as Managing Director of Electronic Trading Technology where she was responsible for overseeing the technology for equity and options electronic execution, algorithmic trading and electronic market making and as Chief Operating Officer for Lava Trading.
 

Etrali Trading Solutions, the global compliance and unified communication services integrator for trading, has appointed new leadership in key European subsidiaries, to showcase global growth and support expansion plans across the region. Brad Gorton and Paul Klebinder have been appointed Managing Directors of the United Kingdom & Ireland, and France & Italy, respectively.
 
The new appointments come at a time of significant global growth for Etrali. 2015 will see Etrali focus on future growth and investment, servicing its customers with leading innovation in trading communications.  Gorton and Klebinder report directly to the CEO, Lionel Grosclaude, working as part of the Etrali global leadership team to support the company’s expansion, and meet the growing customer demand for compliance services across Europe.
 
Brad Gorton previously led the UK sales team at Etrali, and has been influential in successfully driving business development activity in the region. He joined Etrali in 2012 from Speakerbus, where he held several senior positions selling IP products from intercom to turrets. Brad was also responsible for overseeing all EMEA sales teams and the region’s channel partners as EMEA Sales Director.
 
Paul Klebinder brings over 20 years’ experience in international business management, business development and B2B IT and telecommunication services, to the Etrali presence in France and Italy. He previously co-founded and was CEO of Galigeo SAS (Business Intelligence and Dynamic Mapping), where he was instrumental in defining the company’s strategy and commercial policy, before joining Orange Business Services as GDF SUEZ & Suez Environment Global Account Manager, where he was responsible for a portfolio of over 1000 entities.
 
“Etrali operates in a rapidly changing market faced with pressures from regulation and complex technological challenges. Brad and Paul bring a deep understanding of our markets and services to their roles, which will be paramount as we manage the flow of customer demand for unified compliance and communications systems, in some of our key operating markets. They will be influential in supporting these regions as well as the global drive for future growth and expansion. 2015 is an exciting year as we celebrate our 50th anniversary, and we are delighted to welcome Brad and Paul to the Etrali leadership team, as we strengthen our position in Europe and globally,” said Lionel Grosclaude, CEO at Etrali.
 
Etrali Trading Solutions offers an integrated portfolio of unified trading communications, compliance and services, and a trusted dedicated network and cloud offering. With advanced analytics features to drive efficiency in trading and business strategies, Etrali is best placed to help firms turn the challenge of compliance into competitive advantage. 

 At the annual FStech Awards, held on 26 March 2015, Misys, the leading financial software company, picked up three awards across risk management, trading systems and online technology. The FStech Awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector.
 
Misys FusionRisk was voted as winner in the ‘Risk Management Software of the Year’ category. Winning this award previously in 2013, FusionRisk is Misys’ strategic risk management solution that allows banks to build their risk intelligence across the trading and banking books. This allows banks to consolidate, analyse and report risk when and where it matters, across all business lines.
 
In the ‘Online Technology Provider of the Year’ category, Misys was recognised for its FusionBanking Essence Personal Financial Management (PFM) offering. PFM is an online tool that enables banks to create differentiation in a crowded market, to engage and to better understand their customers’ financial needs and aspirations. It provides easy-to-understand data visualisations, customisable user interfaces and captivating functionality – built on the latest technology and highest security standards.
 
Finally, Misys won the ‘Best Trading System’ category for its FusionCapital product. This brings together Misys’ core trading systems with cloud-based global components to offer business-wide, cross-silo solutions in a single state-of-the-art architecture, with seamless front-to-back trade processing, unsurpassed cross-asset coverage and enterprise-wide consistency. 
 
The Misys Fusion architecture creates an integrated platform that drives performance, growth and innovation. Misys is continuing to invest in its solutions and currently has over 2,000 employees working in R&D.
 
“We’re delighted to be recognised with three key financial technology awards from FStech”, said Nadeem Syed, CEO, Misys. “It’s fantastic to see the new product approach under the Fusion architecture receiving such positive feedback from the industry. There has been impressive growth while integrating and innovating our Fusion portfolio to deliver market leading solutions, and winning these awards is testament to the hard work from our employees to make this happen.”
 
As part of the FStech Awards submission process, entries are reviewed by an expert panel of judges from across the financial services sector. 

DealHub (Option Computers Ltd) announced today that its FX post trade connectivity platform has been deployed at Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (Crédit Agricole CIB). DealHub’s modular platform combines the firm’s comprehensive market connectivity with flexible, rules based trade routing and processing, to provide Crédit Agricole CIB with a unified backbone for Straight Through Processing (STP), compliance and post trade workflow automation in their foreign exchange business.
 
Benjamin Gedeon, Global Head of Forex IT at Crédit Agricole CIB commented “Having evaluated a number of options to rationalise multiple post trade infrastructures, a key reason that we chose DealHub is because they offer more than just a connectivity pipe. The rules engine gives us the flexibility we need to rapidly evolve our infrastructure and workflows in a fast changing market, while the user interface provides valuable transparency for both our trading operations and compliance teams. DealHub have delivered a fast, smooth roll-out of the platform, which proved its capacity and resilience with a flawless performance during recent market volatility”.
 
Delivered on premise or as a fully managed service, the DealHub platform helps banks take cost and complexity out of their post trade operations by providing a unified interface between the fragmented external marketplace and the constantly evolving ecosystem of internal bank systems. By creating this unique point of standardisation in the post trade workflow, DealHub delivers a single platform for complex trade processing tasks, as well as providing unrivalled transparency into multi-channel FX flows for both trading and compliance teams.
 
“The successful DealHub roll out at Crédit Agricole CIB is a great example of the value DealHub’s flexible platform can deliver in Post Trade, going far beyond standard STP connectivity” said Chris Leaver, DealHub COO, “we’ve honed our technology and expertise during fifteen years of working to optimise the post trade processes of the world’s largest banks. As a result, our platform now has unrivalled connectivity, performance, and workflow flexibility that’s helping banks of all shapes and sizes reduce both cost and complexity, with fast implementation times ensuring benefits are quickly realised. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with Crédit Agricole CIB to further streamline their post trade operations in the months ahead”.
 
Used today by sixteen of the top twenty global FX banks to capture and process huge volumes of trade flow, DealHub’s post trade platformincorporates connectivity to more than 50 execution venues and bank platforms, as well trade publishing to a growing network of global and regional banks and buy-side institutions. The platform is also uniquely capable of capturing the output of conversational dealing and chat platforms and seamlessly integrating this with flow from eFX channels. Real-time routing, processing and surveillance of this unified feed is enabled by additional modules based on DealHub’s powerful rules engine and a flexible user interface that allows workflows to be tailored to a customer’s precise needs – from position keeping to risk splitting, profitability analysis to compliance alerting. A regulation compliant archive completes the platform, providing a powerful resource for trading and compliance investigations.
 
DealHub’s post trade services integrate seamlessly with the company’s complete range of trading, post trade, compliance and business intelligence solutions, including DealHub RefleX, the modular eFX platform launched in 2014.

Gresham Computing plc, a leading provider of transaction control solutions, today announced the launch of Clareti Transaction Control (CTC) Transaction Reporting. The solution allows financial institutions (FIs) to verify and validate that trades reported to trade repositories comply with the requirements of regulations for eligible trades under Dodd Frank, EMIR, REMIT, G20, MiFID and MiFIR.

A set of pre-defined rules within CTC allows multiple sources of internal data to be compared, validated and verified, so that the correct information is delivered to regulators and registered reporting mechanisms, in the required format, with all of the associated rules applied. The solution validates, in real-time, the integrity of the data held in all FI systems from the front and back office through to the exchange. It checks that the transactional information recorded in the organisation’s internal books and records matches the trade repository view. This provides peace of mind to FIs that their transaction reporting processes are effective, that data is complete and reporting obligations to regulators have been satisfied.

The in-built logic contained within CTC Transaction Reporting allows it to deal with multiple regulations and reporting entities concurrently. Based on certain data fields, or internal reference data, CTC can automatically determine which trades need to be reported to which repositories and reporting entities, such as CME, UnaVista, MAS or the DTCC. CTC can rapidly smooth the transition process should FIs decide to change trade repositories.

“In a tough regulatory environment where approved individuals are to be held accountable for transaction reporting, it is essential to maintain and demonstrate evidence of rigorous financial control and integrity across the organisation,” says Chris Errington, CEO, Gresham. “The old days of sending transaction reports to the Trade Repositories (TRs) and hoping they are accurate have gone. The regulators require accuracy and are starting to validate the information that is sent to the Approved Reporting Mechanisms (ARMs), as demonstrated by some recent high profile cases involving fines and public criticism of major institutions. The ability to deploy CTC in days allows clients to adapt to the ever changing regulatory landscape quickly and cost effectively.”

CTC’s in-built flexibility and scalability ensures that it is particularly adept in handling non-standardised data sets, such as OTC derivative transactions, which can involve the matching of data formats over 1,000 columns wide. While such data formats are problematic for legacy systems, CTC handles them effortlessly. As a result CTC is ideally suited to meeting the demands set by Dodd Frank and EMIR as well as adapting to any future regulatory 

OptionsCity Software, a global provider of electronic trading solutions for professional futures and options traders, today announced the full release of its modular trading platform, Metro NOW. Metro NOW offers professional traders, financial institutions, hedge funds, banks, and commodity trading houses a customizable and scalable futures and options-trading platform, deployed seamlessly via the web.

“Trading software used to be one-size fits all, but in today’s dynamic market environment, trading platforms must be able to adjust to what products are traded and what strategies are deployed,” said Hazem Dawani, CEO and cofounder of OptionsCity Software. “Metro NOW reimagines what trading software could be – empowering traders to create the perfect experience through widgets downloaded from our newly launched City Store.”

Metro NOW blends professional traders’ need for robust pricing, execution and risk-management with the ability to build customized strategies inside the same environment. With Metro NOW, traders can build their own custom widgets or buy off-the-shelf widgets through OptionsCity’s City Store, freeing up development resources for more critical elements of a trading strategy.

“Traditional trading software was rigid, forcing firms into a decision on where they have to compromise – on either functionality or on time and resources,” said OptionsCity CTO and cofounder Victor Glava. “Metro NOW shifts the paradigm and allows firms to both build and buy. Our flexible architecture means that firms can dedicate time and resources developing mission-critical elements, instead of reinventing the wheel.”

• White Papers
• 15.03.2015 07:00 pm