Technology briefs

Fortis Bank selects SunGard for exception management

Fortis Bank, based in Brussels, announced in mid-February that it had selected US software giant SunGard’s intelliMATCH and intelliTRACS products to centralise and automate the firm’s reconciliation and exception management. The bank will use the systems for matching of nostro and internal accounts, deal confirmations, and securities transactions and positions. With the implementation of the software, all its reconciliation functions will be consolidated onto a single platform, allowing it to perform generic matching. "We are confident that the consolidation of these functions will help reduce our operating costs, reduce our operational risk and improve efficiency while exacting greater control," said Bernard Rozencweig, global information services manager at Fortis.

Philippines banks sign up to Misys Opics

Sixteen banks in the Philippines have signed up to Mysis’ Opics product, according to a mid-February statement by the London-based software vendor. The most recent institution to purchase the product is the Philippine National Bank, which will use the treasury software to create "higher efficiency and accuracy in the front, middle, and back office" as well as enhance and smooth transaction flow, improve risk management through volume and stop-loss limits, and perform inventory management of securities. Philippine National Bank executive vice president Asterio Favis said that the ability of Mysis to provide "a localised Filipino solution" was a key reason the bank chose the product.

New firm launches portfolio monitoring software

A new technology company called Independent Risk Monitoring launched in early February to provide asset management companies with risk software. The company said its aims are to reduce risk management costs while providing more effective portfolio monitoring for asset management companies.

The London-based company founders are Peter Jeffreys, co-founder of fund ratings provider Fund Research, and Yves de Naurois, a former head of global investment processes at Citibank Private Bank. Other founding directors from a cross-section of the investment management industry are also involved in the venture, said the company. The company will provide software designed to ensure that users comply with UCITS III regulatory guidelines for the asset management industry.

"We have developed a proprietary exception-based process that provides daily monitoring of all portfolio constituents and immediate identification of major risk violations," said Jeffreys.

Algorithmics to graft Business Objects Tools onto Algo Suite

Mainstream business intelligence (BI) software provider Business Objects has stepped into the financial technology realm with a major OEM agreement with enterprise risk software provider Algorithmics. In the third quarter, Algorithmics is slated to debut the Algo Suite bundle with reporting, ad hoc query and risk performance management software from Business Objects, says Vito Scoepio, director of programs for market and energy risk at Algorithmics. "We have always offered an open and extensible reporting platform," Scoepio says. In fact, users could have grafted the risk and BI software together on their own, but the new packaging will save them that step. "We see this alliance as completing our product offering," Scoepio says.

Essentially, traders will use Business Objects to access the consolidated risk management data of the Algo software to create market and credit risk reports, perform ad hoc queries and analysis, and gauge their levels of risk performance. User firms will get a "commonality between the middle and front offices," Scoepio says.

The Business Objects tool will link to the Algo Suite through the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) application programming interface (API) that allows a programmer to abstract a program from a database. The Algo Suite is used to measure and manage market, credit and operational risk, as well as asset liability and collateral across a financial services enterprise, including wholesale and retail banking and trading books, officials say. Algo Suite version 4.4 also provides Basel II capabilities.

Glitch halts Nymex

A technical failure encountered during an upgrade of unspecified electronic trading floor systems forced the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) to halt trading for half an hour just before noon on February 19, officials announced. The market then reopened for half an hour from 12:15 to 12:45 local time in order to close out positions; it then shut for the rest of the day. On February 20, Nymex issued a release stating that the market had successfully re-opened.

Nymex has licenses for some technology, including the Web Messaging market data distribution and connectivity system from Kenamea, as well as the Tibco Software Rendezvous and Smart Sockets messaging technologies. Nymex also uses onExchange’s Extensible Clearing System (ECS) and Micro Design Services’ electronic order routing and wireless handheld system. Nymex has a proprietary order-matching system called Access. It is unclear which, if any, of these systems was involved in the problem.

Exchange officials didn’t return calls for more details on the cause of the outage.

Norkom Technologies makes pair of announcements

Eontec, a provider of multi-channel customer banking solutions, and Norkom Technologies, an analytics software company specialising in risk management and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for the financial services industry, announced a technical alliance in late February that focuses on fraud and money laundering for financial institutions. Under the terms of the alliance agreement, Norkom and Eontec will integrate their solutions more closely together and promote each other’s technology to their client base.

In early February, Norkom Technologies announced an agreement with the HSBC Group that will see Norkom’s Alchemist risk management software application being used by HSBC to support their operations. Norkom’s Alchemist enables financial services institutions to improve their defenses against all types of risk, including credit and debit card fraud, money laundering, operational risk and other types of financial crime. Headquartered in London, HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with 9,500 offices in 79 countries and territories. Norkom’s portfolio of applications includes anti-money laundering, fraud detection and prevention, operational risk management, watch list management, marketing automation and business performance analytics.