Lombard Risk Management plc, a leading provider of integrated collateral management, regulatory compliance and reporting solutions for the financial services industry, announced its latest release of COLLINE—the company’s award-winning collateral management, clearing, inventory management and optimisation solution.

Lombard Risk’s COLLINE enables firms to move away from managing collateral in business silos by supporting multiple business lines on a single platform therefore enabling firms to significantly better manage their collateral inventory and optimise to ensure the best use of it—addressing the issues of limited liquidity and lower capital charges.  COLLINE version 13 enhancements and new functionality includes:

• Regulatory Enhancements – supporting clients in meeting their IOSCO and Basel III regulatory commitments.
• User-definable Optimisation Rule Builder – used to create and combine optimisation rules for flexible scenario analysis and optimum allocation of collateral.
• Configurable Inventory Manager - providing real-time scenario analysis across financial products and business lines in order to best manage collateral inventory on a firm-wide basis.
• Enhanced Collateral Substitution Workflow - automating complex, time-consuming manual processes related to substitutions enabling managers to deal with high volumes more efficiently.

“There are many regulatory issues such as Dodd-Frank/EMIR, IOSCO and Basel III that firms need to adhere to and COLLINE is constantly being enhanced to meet both market and regulatory requirements,” commented John Wisbey, Chief Executive Officer, Lombard Risk.  “Thanks to the experience of our dedicated collateral team and the detailed insight provided by our clients we aim to ensure that COLLINE remains the system-of-choice for firms to manage all aspects of their collateral efficiently.”

 “It is Lombard Risk’s strategy to provide clients with one solution that combines multiple  aspects of optimisation—trade, inventory and collateral—on a single platform,” commentedHelen Nicol, Product Director, COLLINE, Lombard Risk.  “COLLINE’S strengths in collateral optimisation focuses on its flexible and configurable rule builder offering several algorithms, which in turn drives the allocation process according to the rules selected.  The ‘what if’ functionality provides pre-trade and impact analysis for front office decision making.”

COLLINE® – collateral management, clearing, inventory management and optimisation.
Designed by experienced business practitioners for consolidated end-to-end, cross-product collateral management, clearing, inventory aggregation and optimisation.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) has revealed a significant increase in demand for its revenue and expense management offerings, as financial services firms continue to face stringent regulatory and compliance requirements and a growing need for transparency in the industry.

Broadridge has continued to strengthen its solutions offering since it acquired Bonaire Software Solutions in July 2013. By enhancing product development, the firm has brought a more robust product set to market that addresses strategic business challenges in fee management across the financial services industry. Broadridge’s fully integrated revenue and expense management offering provides industry-leading solutions for fee and expense management through in-house installation, SaaS and Business Process Outsourcing. In the past year, Broadridge has added more than 20 new clients, and has seen continued traction in its SaaS offering.

“The heightened scrutiny around fee arrangements drove a strong year of growth for our revenue and expense management solutions, including the addition of more than 20 new clients,” said Christopher John, President, Revenue & Expense Management, Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions, Broadridge. “Mutual funds and asset managers are demanding innovative solutions that provide transparency and create accurate forecasting, ROI analysis and defined processes for managing and auditing fee arrangements. We remain focused on continuing to enhance our offering of technology driven solutions that empower our clients to manage the wide ranging fee arrangements in place today and drive business.”

With the integration of the Bonaire solutions offering complete, Bonaire’s team of experts in the revenue and expense management space are now fully operating as part of Broadridge’s Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions Group under the Broadridge Financial Solutions name.

“To succeed in this current environment, financial firms need to differentiate themselves, grow assets and meet their compliance mandates. We continue to strengthen the value we bring to our clients by investing in our mutual fund and retirement solutions business and end-to-end product offerings.  With a robust set of innovative solutions, we are well positioned to help mutual funds, asset managers, retirement providers, distributors, and investors succeed in today’s marketplace,” said Gerard Scavelli, President, Mutual Fund & Retirement Solutions, Broadridge.

Lombard Risk Management plc (LSE:LRM), a leading global provider of collateral management, liquidity and regulatory reporting and compliance solutions for the financial services industry, has announced its interim results for the six months ended 30^th September 2014.

Highlights

·      Revenue of £9.3m (2013: £7.3m) up 27.7%, supported by an order book of contracted revenue at £5.1m (2013: £5.4m).

·      121 COREP contracts now signed with 62 being for new names.

·      EBITDA of £0.8m (2013 restated: loss of £0.02m) following revenue growth partially offset by increased staffing levels to deliver additional contracts.

·      Profit before tax of £0.01m (2013 restated loss: £0.5m).

·      Cash at period end of £2.2m (2013: £1.8m) with reduction in debt to £0.3m (2013: £1.0m).

·      Continued investment in European Banking Authority regulatory initiatives including COREP and FINREP, the COLLINE® Optimisation module, and the next generation of REPORTER.

·      Interim dividend of 0.035p (2013: 0.030p) per Ordinary Share.

Chief Executive Officer, John Wisbey, commented on the results:

“The Company achieved a record first half revenue of £9.3 million, up 27.7% on the previous year, and as we again expect our revenues to be weighted towards the second half, this bodes well for our full year performance. The revenue rise was driven, in part, by our regulatory programme for the European Banking Authority’s COREP exceeding management expectations, with 121 clients now signed up for COREP, but we also signed some useful deals for COLLINE® our collateral management platform.”

“The outlook for revenue growth remains promising, with market and regulatory environments continuing to favour the Company’s product positioning in regulation, compliance and risk management despite a tough budgetary environment in the financial sector. In addition, the investment we have made in the last year can be expected to stand us in good stead in the years to come.”

Markit (Nasdaq: MRKT), a leading global diversified provider of financial information services, has announced the launch of new software and services that enable banks and other financial institutions to host and manage instant message chat rooms.
Markit’s new software gives financial institutions direct access to the content in chat rooms they host, and complete control over information security. Chat rooms created using the software will be connected to Markit’s open Collaboration Services network and will be accessible to financial market professionals using a variety of messaging technologies. Today, more than 220,000 industry professionals are connected by Collaboration Services.
In addition, Markit provides fully integrated identity management services facilitated by the Collaboration Services Directory, ensuring firms can verify the identity of all chat room participants, prior to and during sessions, and control access to chat rooms.
Kevin McPartland, head of market structure and technology research at Greenwich Associates, said: “Instant messaging is core to how business gets done on Wall Street and technology that enables people using different platforms to access the same chat room can make a range of front and back office processes more efficient.At the same time, new ways to give compliance and risk officers greater control over who has access to chat rooms, and what is being said, should be welcomed by the industry.”
Andrew Eisen, managing director and head of Collaboration Services at Markit, said: “Use of chat rooms has been scrutinised by regulators and the industry, but banning chat is not the answer.Markit’s solution makes it possible to manage chat rooms across federated platforms in a compliant manner, a first for the industry. This means chat rooms will now be accessible to professionals throughout the enterprise and broader industry, regardless of the messaging system they use.” 
Markit’s chat room software uses standard protocols that are compatible with active and passive compliance software and e-discovery tools. 
Collaboration Services is an open messaging network launched by Markit in partnership with Thomson Reuters and eight global banks in October 2013.The network enables financial market professionals to send instant messages and use chat rooms securely across disparate messaging platforms.