The readers of Profit and Loss magazine have voted DealHub (Option Computers Ltd) number one in two categories in this year’s Readers Choice awards.  DealHub scooped ‘Best Post Trade Provider’ for the 5^th year in a row, while also winning the ‘Digital Markets Innovator Award’ for their trading connectivity service, FX Distribution Hub.

The result was announced last week at the Profit & Loss Digital Markets Award dinner in New York, following months of voting by financial market participants and readers of the publication.

“Over the last year, we’ve continued to put customers at the heart of everything we do at DealHub and we couldn’t be more pleased to win these two awards”commented Peter Kriskinans, DealHub CEO “Winning Best Post Trade Provider for the fifth year in a row is a validation of our record of speed and reliability, as well as our ability to tackle the most complex workflow challenges faced by our customers.I’d like to thank the team at DealHub for all their hard work and dedication over the last year – and our customers around the world for their votes of support.”

Chris Leaver, DealHub COO,added “We’re also delighted that the market has recognised FX Distribution Hub with the Digital Markets Innovator award - we're excited about the role we're playing in making eFX markets more efficient, helping our customers reach new trading partnersby broadening their ECN connectivity and building direct liquidity relationships between member banks”

DealHub’s post trade solutions are live at the majority of the world’s largest FX banks and a significant number of regional and specialist banks, brokers and buy side institutions.  These firms rely on Dealhub to safely deliver high throughput Straight ThroughProcessing (STP) messages, from the full range of trading channels, into risk and back office systems.  Additional workflow modules from DealHub perform complex transformation, reconciliation, processing and regulatory reporting tasks, as well as providing live business intelligence on all trade flow.

FX Distribution Hub is a fully managed trading connectivity platform for market making and liquidity sourcing via direct connectivity to trading venues and the Hub’s growing membership of global and regional banks.  Additional workflow and pricing logic can be managed by the Hub, including price margining and low latency credit checking.  A powerful business intelligence capability provides real-time and historical feedback on pricing and infrastructure performance.  The managed service is hosted in Equinix LD4 and NY4, co-located with many of the industry’s leading participants and trading venues.

Diasoft, a leading provider of cutting-edge financial software solutions, has achieved Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status.

Microsoft is the world’s leader in information technologies, developing a wide range of devices, software and IT- services. This is one of the largest corporations in the world, operating in more than 170 countries. Microsoft`s workforce estimates more than 90 thousand people. According to the annual research of Millward Brown agency, by results of 2012 Microsoft is included in TOP 5 of the most expensive brands in the world (78 billion dollars).

Today cooperation between leading organizations has become the key tendency of financial sector globally, as it allows strengthening positions of both partners though strong mutual support and acquisition of invaluable experience.

Microsoft Gold partnership opens new prospects and benefits to Diasoft. With Microsoft Gold Certified status Diasoft obtained new opportunities for development of its own solutions for the automation of financial institutions, and, as a result, all Diasoft customers will benefits from the cutting-edge Microsoft technologies.

Diasoft has the right for production of distributives and sale of licensed Microsoft software products. Both flagship solutions by Diasoft – Diasoft FA# and FLEXTERA – utilize Microsoft infrastructure solutions, including MS SQL Server 2012. Today up to 70% of Diasoft customers select databases basing on Microsoft technologies.

“We are always happy for success of our partners, - says Nikolay Pryanichnikov, President and CEO, Microsoft Russia. - Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status of Diasoft confirms the availability of specialists with deep expertise in development, deployment and maintenance of financial solutions for data processing platforms on the basis of Microsoft technologies. This is the highest grade that Microsoft grants to its partners for best in class solutions.”

Asset managers are feeling unprepared for future challenges despite already making strides to improve fund oversight, according to a survey of North American institutional asset managers. The research, carried out by Milestone Group, surveyed leading organizations and showed that 40 percent of respondents felt their current operation was unprepared to meet anticipated regulatory changes and desired an increase in automation. However, approximately 61 percent would not wait for new regulations to arrive before strengthening oversight, as asset managers and trustees make protecting their reputation and the interests of investors their top priority.

Commenting on the findings, Marlena Fitts, Product Management & Marketing Leader at Milestone Group said: “While the industry recognizes the importance of regulation, the reputation they’ve worked to build is the major factor for firms looking to strengthen their fund oversight functions. An education process is taking place across the market, and it is positive to see that most already understand the need for performing some level of operational oversight of their service provider outputs beyond periodic service level meetings.”

Fitts went on to say: “Rather than performing manually intensive tasks like collecting and entering data into spreadsheets to perform checks, organizations need to have a platform in place that centralizes and automates the process of validating key data points from their suppliers, allowing asset managers to focus on analyzing and managing exceptions, often within tight time windows. For all firms that outsource key functions such as NAV calculation, oversight automation is essential to reducing operational risk.”

The survey respondents, which mostly involved traditional institutional asset managers, also included wealth managers, pension advisors, and a third-party administrators’ middle office operation that provides oversight for investment management clients. The size of the respondents ranged from $4.5 billion AUM to $2 trillion.

Diasoft, a global provider of cutting-edge financial software solutions, has achieved Fujitsu SELECT Partner status.

Fujitsu is a leading provider of infrastructure solutions across Europe, Middle East, Africa and India regions, as well as in Russia and CIS countries. The company offers a wide range of IT-products, solutions and services – starting from the user licenses up to datacenters, IT-infrastructure management services and IaaS (infrastructure as a service).

Diasoft has successfully strengthened its competence in implementation of Fujitsu solutions, and increased a number of Fujitsu certified specialists, developing software solutions for the automation of financial business. As a certified Fujitsu SELECT Partner Diasoft has the right to distribute and install Fujitsu solutions. With SELECT Partner status Diasoft received a number of benefits, including additional technical resources, support from Fujitsu in implementation of IT-projects, as well as an increase in projects` productivity.

SELECT Partner Program has a three-tier structure. First level of partnership (Partner status) provides a wide range of opportunities including online trainings for employees and access to directory of Fujitsu solutions. With the second level of partnership – SELECT Partner a company acquires some additional benefits: personal SELECT Partner manager and extended technical resources. To achieve this level Diasoft has successfully passed the certification on Fujitsu products and solutions of SERVER & STORAGE category.

The third level of Fujitsu partner program - SELECT Expert status opens the opportunity to obtain expertise in the field of Fujitsu Server Infrastructures (Server Certification allowing to install and configure Fujitsu servers and blade-servers), as well as in the field of Fujitsu Infrastructure Solutions (Fujitsu virtualization and automation technologies certificate).

MasterCard (NYSE: MA) today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Opus Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.,  (“Opus”) to acquire its subsidiary, ElectraCard Services Private Limited, (“ECS”), a leading global provider of software solutions and processing services for electronic payment and card systems. MasterCard previously had a minority investment in ECS. This transaction is anticipated to close in the second quarter of 2014.

ECS, headquartered in Pune, India is a leading provider of software products and processing services for electronic payments. Its customer base includes financial institutions, retailers and telcos in over 25 countries globally. ECS’ suite of products enables customers to issue and manage all types of payment cards and electronically process card transactions across multiple channels such as ATM, POS, internet and mobile.

MasterCard’s acquisition of ECS extends its product offerings and adds to the company’s turnkey issuing processing, acquiring processing and switching solutions.

Commenting on the acquisition, Vicky Bindra, president, Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa, MasterCard, said: “The acquisition of ECS strengthens our capabilities and enables us to offer a true end-to-end solution for our customers. ECS’s expertise complements MasterCard’s products and services, making us an even stronger player in the field of processing and switching. We welcome ECS and its talented team into the MasterCard family, and we look forward to working alongside them.”

Ramesh Mengawade, Chairman of Opus said: “We have had a strong relationship with MasterCard for many years now and are excited that the ECS team will be part of MasterCard enabling it to deliver turnkey processing solutions to its customers. Opus will continue its focus on growing its IT services business for the credit and payments market in the North America region.”
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

OptionsCity Software , a global provider of electronic trading solutions for professional futures and options traders, announced that London-based Spinaris Capital will expand its FX and energy options trading utilizing OptionsCity’s Metro and Freeway platforms.

Situated within OptionsCity’s hosting infrastructure, Spinaris Capital will trade on CME and Eurex using a combination of Metro, the company’s flagship trading and risk management platform, and Freeway, its multi-asset automated trading solution.

“As markets continue to consolidate and expand, we require a low-latency trading system that provides direct market access to expand into new markets quickly,” remarked Spinaris Capital Chief Investment Officer, Adam Webb “Spinaris Capital has found a competitive solution in OptionsCity which enables us to maximize our fast alpha models.”

Spinaris integrated its internal trading models into Metro via the Freeway API and utilizes the system to make markets, as well as identify and execute on opportunities in the market.

“Being able to offer a complete solution that incorporates both software and hosting empowers customers like Spinaris Capital to seamlessly expand the firm’s trading portfolio,” commented Darran Hodder, OptionsCity Head of London/EU. “We are committed to serving as a partner in their global trading operation.”

OptionsCity’s hosting initiative was based on the clients’ need for a bundled solution for its software coupled with hosting to trade on exchanges, such as the CME, NYMEX, ICE, LIFFE, and EUREX. Trading institutions can use this infrastructure to gain reliable low-latency market access while lowering or removing overhead infrastructure costs.

Banking analytics, risk and compliance pioneer, iCreate, today announced a strategic partnership with tax information reporting leader, Convey Compliance Systems, Inc., to help global banks accelerate their FATCA compliance initiatives.

iCreate’s 8-year track record in banking data aggregation providing analytics, risk and compliance solutions has teamed up with  Convey’s 28-year track record in tax information reporting to bring the global marketplace a solution that is end-to-end and best-in-class for helping financial institutions identify FATCA-impacted accounts and seamlessly manage their reporting and withholding obligations.

iCreate's recently launched Fintellix FATCA Compliance system integrates seamlessly with core banking systems. Fintellix has the ability to run business regulations on consolidated enterprise data and extract reports, analytics and regulatory formats to determine FATCA-impacted accounts. Convey’s Taxport platform then applies the appropriate FATCA rules, generates the returns, and transmits the data from the bank to the submitting authority or to the IRS, depending on the bank location and current IGA status. This seamless “end-to-end” data solution also provides tools to manage the withholding and remittance of payments on recalcitrant accounts. With the combined solution, banks can rest assured that they have the tools they need to efficiently deliver timely and accurate FATCA compliance reporting,

Speaking on the occasion, Anup Pai, COO, iCreate, said, "We are delighted to partner with a category leader such as Convey with their close to 3 decades of specialised expertise in compliance reporting. This partnership would be of tremendous benefit to global Financial Institutions, as well as to regional Financial Institutions that have a substantial US/OECD customer portfolio as they prepare for FATCA compliance as well as the looming CRS guidelines."

Jon Paradis, Vice President of Alliances at Convey added, "We are equally delighted to partner with iCreate who has a deep understanding of banking compliance and a robust compliance platform. Merging these capabilities with Convey’s knowledge and expertise of US tax information reporting and withholding provides a compelling solution for global banks to address their current and future tax compliance challenges."

With an impressive joint list of clients, iCreate and Convey have already helped to improve compliance challenges for a significant number of the largest and most influential banking organizations in North America, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Philippines, UK, Indonesia, Mauritius, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. Given the broad-sweeping impact of the new FATCA reporting requirements and the combined best-in-class capabilities of each firm, partnering to deliver a seamless FATCA solution was a natural fit. 

OptionsCity Software, a global provider of electronic trading solutions for professional futures and options traders, today announced that users of its flagship Metro trading platform will now have direct access to the OptionsCity Algo Store. The Algo Store was created to provide customers with a marketplace to buy and sell algorithms for trading futures and options. OptionsCity offers this enhancement through Metro Link, a tool that allows traders to run algorithms purchased in the Algo Store within Metro.

“We are committed to empowering our customers with automation tools to accelerate their trading and market making operations.” remarked Hazem Dawani, CEO at OptionsCity. “Metro Link offers advanced functionality through a set of algorithms and components in the Algo Store, enabling clients to simply select, download, and use algos relevant to their electronic trading needs.”

Metro Link provides Metro 5.0 users drop-in access to Algo Store algorithms with no additional setup time and cost, long-term commitments, or the need for developers. Some of the offerings in the Algo Store include delta and gamma hedging, opportunity detection and execution as well as quoting algorithms.

Through the Algo Store, third-party developers are able to write and sell their algorithms, or components of algorithms, to traders around the world. The community aspect is enriched by the inclusion of developer profiles, ratings, and the prospect to become an OptionsCity Certified Developer™, a title granted to top-rated quantitative analysts and developers.

Previously available only to users of OptionsCity’s automated trading solution Freeway, now both Metro and Freeway users can access Algo Store algorithms and can search by price, category, and popularity and seamlessly download for use in their existing trading infrastructure.

The announcement of Metro Link arrives on the heels of OptionsCity’s major software release of Metro 5.0.