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.

The Banking sector is renowned for the volume and velocity of Data it generates, transmits and stores. Given the recent financial crises and the subsequent regulatory pressures, the cost of IT has grown exponentially for not just the banking organisation on the whole but even at a divisional level. 

Banks are now faced with drastically cutting IT costs, but not at the cost of compromising data security and integrity, which could lead to reputational, legal, monetary damages. The need therefore to explore unconventional and innovative options which shrink IT costs while safeguarding data integrity. However, with limited resources and even limited budgets, a conventional IT implementation methodology is neither an efficient nor an advisable solution.

Cloud as a technology option for Data and business processes has gained a credible foothold in recent times across several industry sectors including financial services. This article details the ‘must knows’ for implementing an efficient and secure information management framework in a Cloud environment. Let’s first take a quick look at the various Cloud delivery and deployment models available for a bank.

Zurich is one of the world’s leading insurance groups, and one of the few to operate on a global basis. Its General Insurance and Global Life business in Australia and New Zealand works through agents, banks and brokers to deliver a wide range of insurance and savings solutions to its 21 million individual, commercial and corporate customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The company has had a presence in Australia since 1961, and its Australian life business continues to receive accolades for delivering market leading service, innovative products and outstanding value. Because of the countries’ young professionals and high net-worth customers, the Australian and New Zealand life market offers a significant potential for growth, and more than 1,200 employees are now servicing those customers in Australia and New Zealand.

Diasoft, a global provider of innovative core banking solutions, is ranked the second in the IBS Russian Sales League Table 2014. With 10 new-name deals signed in 2013, Diasoft does not only demonstrate a significant result, but also goes ahead numerous of its competitors operating in the Russian market. Additionally this year Diasoft is included into the Global IBS Sales League Table.

The IBS Sales League Table is universally acknowledged as the barometer for international core banking systems sales activity. The table is compiled annually from submissions from each supplier detailing the names of the banks that have bought their systems in the year. IBS verifies each submission; license renewals and extensions to the systems within a bank are excluded.

Below are the new 2014 results and further down an archive of previous Tables from 2003 onwards (IBS Journal subscribers only):

Russian vendors Sales League Table 2014 (results Jan-Dec 2013) >> (subscription required).

Global Sales League Table 2014 (results Jan-Dec 2013) >> (subscription required).

IBS analyses ups and downs of the Russian market throughout 2013, highlighting notable trends, and compares the new-name core banking software wins of major domestic players in Russia. For more information and to access selected feature articles, please register free on the website http://www.ibsintelligence.com.

Diasoft, a global provider of cutting-edge core banking solutions, announced that its innovative FLEXTERA has been selected by microfinance organization Bistrodengi to automate loans accounting business processes of the company and to support its development strategy.

Following the extensive business development strategy and its course for the market transparency, Federal MFO “Bistrodengi”, the leader of “loan till payday” segment, and Diasoft have signed an agreement for the back-office automation of loans accounting business processes of the company on the basis of Diasoft cutting-edge JavaEE Framework.

“The solution of choice should to be flexible enough in order to quickly adapt our business to ever-changing market conditions and requirements, - says Yuri Provkin, CEO at Bistrodengi. – The key reasons behind our choice of FLEXTERA were the ability of the system to support increasing legislation and changes introduced by Regulator, as well as a high level of integration into IT-infrastructure of our company. FLEXTERA Loans appeared to be the only solution fully incorporating all of the above requirements.”

FLEXTERA Loans ensures automated maintenance of lending contracts with individuals, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, and supports operations with various types of loans. The functional scope of the solution includes automated interest accrual, payment plan generation, automated loan repayments, credit limit control, and product performance analysis. FLEXTERA can flexibly support the retail business of large multi-branch bank.

FLEXTERA Loans is a new generation of core banking solution, built on scalable high performance Diasoft Framework that allows it to support the rapid business growth of financial institution and easily increase performance depending on current business volumes of financial institution. By results of the project Bistrodengi will obtain high performance solution able to ensure successful business development for large microfinance organization.

“Our project with Bistrodengi appeared to be one of the first FLEXTERA implementations in microfinance sector, - says Dmitry Zubarev, CEO, Diasoft. – The main goal of our cooperation – to develop an innovative solution that can support an ever-changing legislation, be user-friendly, allow saving the time and ensure the most favorable conditions for our clients servicing. We hope for a fruitful collaboration and will go the extra mile in order to achieve all project plans.”