corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, reports that Edinburgh-based investment manager Baillie Gifford has migrated the processing of its futures transactions to corfinancial’s post-trade system, Salerio.

Baillie Gifford selected Salerio in 2018 after a review of its proprietary trade matching and settlement practices. The firm decided that it was time to transition its existing operating model to a strategic solution that encompassed the entire trade processing lifecycle. Not only was it looking for a comprehensive, automated exception management system, but also the right people to work with.

Initially, Salerio was used for Baillie Gifford’s equity and bond trading, but since April 2020 futures transactions have been added to the asset class mix.

“The fact that we went live on futures during lockdown bears testimony to the robust nature of the Salerio application and the flexibility of corfinancial’s implementation team,” said Louise Laidlaw, Head of Settlements, Baillie Gifford. “We ran Salerio in parallel with our legacy futures application until we were ready to switch the old system off. Ultimately we had a flawless transition.”

One key benefit for Baillie Gifford of utilising Salerio for futures trades has been the replacement of faxed trade notifications (a requirement from one of its custodians) with more streamlined SWIFT instructions. In a working from home environment, this manual handling proved to be particularly challenging before Salerio came onstream.

“Bringing futures into scope with Salerio has eliminated some time-consuming, manual processing for us,” said Laidlaw. “Moreover, the transition has improved our control, authorisation and visibility of trade matching and settlement for futures transactions.”