TPBank, a prominent Vietnam financial services institution,  has signed up with iCreate, a Banking Decision Sciences firm,  for establishing an enterprise MIS, Financial Reporting and Risk Analysis framework. TPBankis recognized for deploying innovative technology and industry-leading best practices to enhance customer experience.

This decision comes in the wake of rising regulatory pressures in the region and the bank’s focus on enhancing customer experience, growth, and profitability. After several solution evaluations, TPBankdecided to lay the foundation for addressing the bank’s current and future MIS and Risk challenges by opting for a DW-MIS platform of global standards.

As a part of the bank’s larger information management strategy, iCreate will help TPBankdevelop a Central Data Repository that will leverage iCreate’s proven Banking-specific Data Warehouse, for generating enterprise MIS, Financial Reporting and Risk Analysis. iCreate will establish and activatea sophisticated,future-ready information ecosystem that will help TPBankmanage their data for accurate, reliable and timely decision making for information consumers at the leadership level.iCreate’spremier partner in Vietnam, Net Vision was actively involved in the deliberations leading to the decision.

Speaking on the occasion Bui Quang Cuong, CIO, TPBanksaid, “It is our vision to be a digital banking and services leader in Vietnam by constantly raising the bar on customer experience. This translates to transforming our information management capabilities, which requires establishing a robustdecision enablement and risk management framework. We chose iCreate for theircomprehensiveunderstanding of our information management challenges, as well as theiradvanced technology and experience in banking-specific information management systems.”

Vivek Subramanyam, CEO, iCreate added, “I am happy that iCreate has been chosen as the strategic partner as TPBank lays the foundation forEDW and Reporting. I look forward to TPBankleveraging our experiential understanding of banking information management as well as our Analytics, Risk and Compliancesolutions built using global best practices.”

 Misys, the leading financial software company, has been rated as “Best-in-Class” in two categories in a recent CEB TowerGroup report, entitled “Trade Finance Applications – Technology Assessment”. CEB TowerGroup analysts evaluated the major trade finance software providers across four categories, comparing corporate client online services, transactional capabilities, and levels of enterprise support for trade finance. 

The technology analysis from CEB TowerGroup profiles and ranks trade finance solutions, by combining qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with industry experts, financial institutions and technology providers.

Misys was awarded “Best-in-Class” in two categories:

1.     CORPORATE CLIENT SERVICES – covering attributes that enable banks’ corporate clients to initiate and authorise transactions quickly and effectively.

2.     TRANSACTIONAL CAPABILITIES – covering those attributes that enable banks to deliver a comprehensive set of trade services and adapt to changing client needs.

“Misys’ trade services offerings have an impressive user experience that both front- and back-end applications deliver, and have many in-built features designed to drive more efficient trade operations at banks and for their clients,” states CEB TowerGroup research director Steve Murphy. “Features of note, include its clean and sophisticated layout of information to manage pending workload and ensure completeness and correctness of transactions. Native support for integrated supply chain finance and SWIFT TSU was a notable differentiator.”

The Misys Trade Services solutions also scored well across the two remaining categories, reflecting a breadth of functionality.

“In a commoditised market banks are modernising trade finance systems to drive competitive advantage and gain greater workflow control to reduce processing cost and labour requirements”, adds David Hennah, Head of Trade and Supply Chain Finance, Misys.. “This endorsement demonstrates how our focus on addressing the global needs of corporate customers, their financial supply chain requirements and demand for greater self service, is what sets Misys apart.”

A key finding of the report highlights that leading trade finance banks are investing in technology and undergoing strategic organisational changes with 49% of banks surveyed seeking to replace outdated trade finance systems. Looking forward, banks are experimenting with the convergence of traditional trade and supply chain finance to offer innovative and cost-effective trade solutions for corporate clients.

Bravura Solutions Pty Limited (Bravura) has announced an expanded role for the current global Director of Strategy, Darren Stevens.

Stevens, who joined Bravura in 2007 and is based in Melbourne, has been appointed Director, Product Management and Strategy for global wealth management.

In addition to his previous strategy role, he will be responsible for the global strategic direction and product management of Bravura’s wealth management suite, including wrap and platform, investment, superannuation, life insurance and portfolio administration products.

Stevens will be managing a global team spanning the APAC and EMEA regions. He will continue to report directly to Bravura’s global Chief Executive Officer, Tony Klim.

Klim said: “We are delighted that Darren has agreed to expand his role at Bravura. His deep product and industry knowledge, coupled with more than 26 years of industry experience – including his previous strategy role – make him the perfect fit for this newly created position.

“With 12 contracted Sonata engagements underway and another two close to contract completion, we are seeing rapid market acceptance and adoption of our software throughout APAC and EMEA, across multiple business lines. This growth has been the catalyst for Bravura to ensure global coordination and prioritisation of individual client Sonata development, alongside company funded R&D.”

Commenting on his new role, Stevens remarked: “I’m excited to expand my role and team at Bravura. A key focus area going forward will be to ensure our products and solutions closely align not only with our corporate strategy, but also – more importantly – with the needs of our client base, the market / industry direction and future innovation.”

Stevens officially commenced the role in August 2014.

 Lombard Risk Management plc (LSE:LRM), a leading provider of integrated regulatory reporting and compliance, and collateral management solutions for the financial services industry, has announced  large Japanese bank switches from rFrame to REPORTER for Bank of England regulatory reporting.

 “Following a series of tactical mergers and acquisitions by software companies to acquire market share, we have seen an influx of new business as clients that are faced with changing to the acquirer’s software platform take the opportunity to re-evaluate the market.”  Says John Wisbey, Chief Executive Officer, Lombard Risk.  “When faced with switching reporting systems, it’s an opportunity for firms to see what’s new on the market, and we have seen a consistent flow of financial institutions (2 in the last week) electing to move to our REPORTER.”

Rob Markham, Head of Regulatory Sales, EMEA, explains: “We are delighted to welcome this prestigious Japanese bank and others to our growing client community, and thank them for selecting REPORTER. Lombard Risk clients benefit from our unparalleled 25 years’ experience in the risk and regulatory compliance field, and a particularly flexible product deployment approach that enables our solution to fit around clients’ existing infrastructures, rather than enforcing a prescriptive system that will, over time, complicate the reporting processes.”

REPORTER is an end-to-end regulatory reporting solution for the global financial services sector which is used by over 250 firms globally, 100+ for Bank of England reporting and more for EBA Common Reporting here in the UK.

REPORTER for Bank of England reporting enables firms to:

• Automate an end-to-end regulatory reporting process from data acquisition, standardisation through to calculation, reporting and submission via XML
• Select from multiple deployment options that fit around existing architectures and processes that support a rapid deployment and superior solution total cost of ownership relative to other systems
• Leverage existing data sources for complete coverage of reporting requirements
• Achieve enhanced ad-hoc reporting

DealHub (Option Computers Ltd) has announced the launch of DealHub RefleX, a modular eFX platform that combines the firm’s tried and tested trading connectivity with a new price and execution management engine and an HTML5 client trading portal to deliver a high performance, multi-channeleFX platform.

Peter Kriskinans, CEO of DealHub, comments “The launch of DealHubRefleX marks a major step in the evolution of our trading solutions.  Over the last five years, we’ve painstakingly built out our eFX technology, working hand in hand with customers to build best of breed components for every step of the trading workflow.  Our new pricing and execution tools, combined with a cutting edge HTML5 trading GUI, complete the stack – we now offer an unrivalled breadth of capabilities pre and post trade, with the commercial, technical and workflow flexibility to support banks of all sizes”

DealHub RefleX provides banks with a flexible toolkit of eFX modules that can be configured and customised to deliver seamless enhancement to an existing bankplatform, or as an end-to-end solution for the complete eCommerce workflow from liquidity sourcing, through price management, venue and portal distribution to execution, credit and risk management, and Straight Through Processing (STP).  The platform also features built in business intelligence tools for monitoring trading performance and system latency, as well as compliance investigation and surveillance. DealHub RefleXcan be deployed on-premise or delivered as a service from DealHub’s co-located hosting facilities in Equinix LD4 and NY4.

Chris Leaver, COO of DealHub, comments “Very few banks now opt for a 100% build strategy in eFX, and the first generation vendor platforms are looking dated, withlimited flexibility or differentiation.  DealHub RefleX offers banks a genuine alternative - the platform provides our customers with a flexible, fast to market route to a high performance, customised eFX platform - one component at a time, or across the full stack”

Based on DealHub’s established complex event processing technology, the platform offers next generation functionality, coupled with the flexible business logic that allows banks to customise the platform to their own unique business goals.  Highlights include:

·         A powerful new price engine that blends and filters liquidity from multiple sources, feeding into an intuitive trader dashboard for active rate management

·         A highly flexible margining module that adds specific customer mark-up according to multi-level criteria, pre-defined in easy to use configuration tables

·         The platform includes sophisticated logic for the calculation and decomposition of cross rates and associated margins

·         Trade requests are handled by a rules-based execution management module, which includes last look validation and a comprehensive manual intervention capability

·         Credit checks can either be coordinated with in-house systems, or handled by the low latency limit management module

·         DealHub’s FX Distribution Hub forms an integral part of the platform, providing tried and tested liquidity sourcing and price distribution connectivity to all key FX venues and a growing number of global and regional banks

The launch of DealHub RefleX also sees the introduction of a new client trading portal that works alongside DealHub’s proven venue and API distribution technology, to give clients access to the full range of distribution channels.  The new portal has been developed using the latest HTML5 technology for native browser delivery and can be fully branded and extended to give banks a private electronic distribution channel with a unique customer experience.  The portal captures Spot, Forward, Swap and NDF transactions via executable streamingor request for quote models.  Powerful decision support tools include a comprehensive charting library, as well as news feeds and the option to embed a fully auditable chat capability for in-deal support and automated capture of more complex trades.

The core elements of DealHub RefleX, including the new price engine, are in live use with a wide variety of bank customers, from tier one firms to regional specialists.

The new platform integrates seamlessly with DealHub’s complete range of trading, post trade and compliance solutions that combine the widest range of market connectivity, with modularpre and post trade capabilities at every stage of the trading workflow, allowing customers to rapidly build and deploy highly customised trading infrastructure that reinforces their unique competitive advantages.  DealHub’s trading solutions are used by a range of Financial Markets customers, including the majority of the world’s largest banks. 

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), the leading global provider of technology-driven solutions to the financial services industry, reports that in the six years since the global financial crisis, its post-trade managed service client base in North America has more than doubled. This growth represents 15 new clients and is the fourth year of double-digit growth for Broadridge Business Process Outsourcing.

After years of cost cutting throughout the financial services industry, recent and ongoing demands for increased capital and collateral are putting renewed pressure on firms to optimize, transform and reevaluate their business models. Broadridge is uniquely positioned to help firms adapt to market structure changes by mutualizing costs and capabilities while sustaining premium service in operations and technology. As a result, more than 30 firms in total, including Bloomberg Tradebook and Société Générale, have contracted with Broadridge to manage all or part of their post-trade operations.

“We recognized many years ago that this would become a serious pressure point for financial services firms, and today we’re leveraging our state-of-the-art technology combined with our unique industry insights and expertise to optimize, transform and enhance the speed to market for our clients. This is an increasingly important offering as firms struggle to comply with enormous regulatory challenges while also freeing up investment dollars to accelerate revenue growth,” said Mike Alexander, President, Broadridge Business Process Outsourcing. “Given Broadridge’s scope, scale and growing global banking clientele, we have become the de facto industry standard in managed services for post-trade processing.”

The customized service offers a unique combination of experienced operations staff and process expertise with Broadridge’s award-winning technology. Scivantage, a Global FinTech 100 technology provider, recently selected Broadridge as its exclusive provider of reconciliation managed services to its 17 clients. Across the industry, Broadridge handles 4,000 reconciliations daily.

“Regulatory compliance, cost mutualization and operational risk management are the three major concerns for financial services firms globally. Broadridge’s global technology and operations solutions provide a comprehensive menu of middle- and back-office services that are multi-currency, multi-asset class and multi-geography,” said Arun Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, Global Technology and Operations Solutions, Broadridge. “Our managed service is best-in-class and trusted among the leading regulatory authorities globally due to the reputation we’ve built over the past five decades.”

“There is constant pressure for firms to comply with costly regulations while also continuing to make investments and grow revenue. Broadridge clients tap into the firm’s expertise, scale and flexibility to address escalating post-trade processing expenses, leverage industry best practices to minimize operational risk, and allow them to focus on evolving their business models,” said Andy Efstathiou, Research Director, NelsonHall.

For more than 50 years, Broadridge has been helping financial firms across the capital markets, investment management and wealth management businesses transform their business models by outsourcing operational functions to transfer operational risk and reduce cost.

Diasoft, a leading financial software provider, has joined the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) to assist drive banking innovation and participate in the development of banking technology standards.

BIAN is an independent, member-owned, not-for-profit organisation, which, in collaboration with industry participants, aims to define and set the software standards for banking interoperability services. The network focuses on creating a standard semantic banking services landscape. Since its creation in 2008, BIAN’s mission has been to establish a service-oriented architecture (SOA) standard in the banking industry.

Diasoft was one of the first companies to realise the potential of service-oriented architecture. In 2005 Diasoft worked with BIAN-member IBM — one of the leaders of the SOA-industry, to implement the principles of SOA, EDA (Electronic Design Automation) and component-based business-process driven architecture into its next-generation FLEXTERA solution. Focusing on SOA principles and Java EE technologies, Diasoft created a universal component-based FLEXTERA system to deliver future-proof financial solutions to its customers. These can integrate easily within their existing infrastructure and meet both today’s needs and the strategic requirements of their businesses.

Today, the FLEXTERA system contains more than 70 off-the-shelf components for front-to-back automation of the modern banking industry. Each of the components can be either implemented independently, while still tightly integrated with existing software, or alternatively, as a full solution - bringing all the benefits of modern architecture for financial institutions. More than 800 business processes are supported out-of-the box covering every aspect of retail, corporate and investment banking.

Diasoft believes that SOA is the best solution for the financial industry for facilitating the development of new applications, while also speeding up the time-to-market for new products.

BIAN membership will provide Diasoft with numerous advantages, including a greater insight into the exact needs and requirements of banks, the opportunity to jointly solve the technology issues banks are facing today, and the ability to gain increased knowledge from work in progress on service standards.

“BIAN’s service landscape serves as a reference model for financial institutions globally and we are excited to be taking an active role in shaping of the industry standards which will bring numerous benefits to financial institutions globally, such as an increased business agility, improved operations, and decreased IT spending”, - said Mikhail Kryuchkov, International Business Development Director at Diasoft.

Members of BIAN support the banking industry by combining knowledge of the requirements and trends of the Financial Services landscape with the ability to design and provide new IT-solutions. Therefore, through membership of BIAN, Diasoft will obtain a strong network, through which to exchange information and knowledge and support the sector's transition to newer, non-proprietary technologies.

Last year Diasoft has assessed FLEXTERA to fit BIAN’s approach to building banking architecture and componentisation of the solutions. By results of assessment FLEXTERA turned out to perfectly match to BIAN`s financial services landscape.

“At Diasoft, we are proud of being a pioneer in the adoption of SOA principles. We always aim to deliver the most innovative technologies and the market’s best solutions to our customers”, - said Mikhail Kryuchkov, International Business Development Director at Diasoft.  “ of architectural principles should simplify the integration between components from different vendors and help banks to build more effective IT architectures. We believe that with our BIAN membership, we will be able to deliver to our clients the most cutting-edge technologies and open solutions and help them to innovate. We look forward to our productive partnership and the benefits it will bring all of us.”

Hans Tesselaar, executive director, BIAN said: “BIAN is growing at an amazing rate, with new members from banks, software vendors and service providers continuing to come together to develop a new industry standard – a flexible architecture that can improve a bank’s ability to work flexibly across systems and help reduce integration costs. “It is great to have Diasoft join this growing network – a company that sees the real value of adopting and implementing SOA principles.”

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc (NYSE:BR) has announced that Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), one of the largest providers of business processing and cloud-based solutions and a leading provider of retirement services, has implemented Broadridge’s Defined Contribution Data Management Service offering to provide unprecedented insights into the defined contribution marketplace.  Broadridge’s Access Data business team will aggregate and enrich ADP’s sales and asset data to empower ADP’s marketing and sales teams to better service current business partners, as well as identify new growth opportunities.

“Identifying advisors selling defined contribution assets represents a significant opportunity for retirement plan providers like ADP that partner with distributors to grow defined contribution assets under management. Our solutions will provide ADP with actionable intelligence about advisors that specialize in defined contribution business,” stated Frank Polefrone, Senior Vice President, Broadridge. “Our expanding and unique suite of offerings for the retirement space makes us well-positioned to help all of our clients, retirement recordkeepers and DCIO fund providers alike, capitalize on the growth in the defined contribution marketplace.”

Broadridge supports retirement and fund providers with a comprehensive service offering for regulatory and marketing communications and mutual fund trade processing, as well as data, analytics and reporting to enable business growth. Now, Broadridge’s Defined Contribution Data Management and Retirement Advisor Intelligence solutions will deliver the industry’s most comprehensive view of the defined contribution marketplace. Broadridge’s Access Data team also provides data services and reporting to the leading DCIO fund firms in the industry to help those firms track defined contribution sales made by advisors that partner with leading independent recordkeeping platforms like ADP, Schwab, The Standard, and others.

“We decided to partner with Broadridge for this important offering because of its suite of products and services for the retirement services industry, but also the specific expertise of its Access Data team to manage and enhance defined contribution data.  This offering is a critical aspect of our plans to service our distribution partners, provide information to our fund partners, and assist our sales and marketing teams to grow our business,” said Chris Augelli, Vice President, Product Marketing and Business Development, ADP Retirement Services.  “They bring a comprehensive view of the market and the expertise to effectively mine the industry’s big data sets, which empower us to target and win new business,” added Mr. Augelli.

Defined contribution assets are forecast to grow to $6.7 trillion over the next five years. The key to unlocking that growth lies in knowing where those opportunities exist. The fastest growth segment for defined contribution assets is generated by the small to medium-sized plan segment supported by independent recordkeeping platforms.