SuperDerivatives adds deal capture facility

SuperDerivatives, a UK-based online foreign exchange pricing firm, has added a deal capture facility linking its currency options pricing service to back-office risk management systems. SuperDerivatives said the feature has been added due to client requests in the wake of the Allfirst foreign exchange trading debacle.

The new facility allows options to be priced and then processed to a customer’s back office whenever a deal is transacted. The deal entry page can be combined with all other risk management systems that clients already have in place.

“The Allfirst experience has served as a pertinent reminder that errors, intentional or otherwise, can easily creep into the trading process. The ease of deal entry from the SuperDerivatives pricing platform will remove at least some of the potential for errors, and will increase the efficiency of processing trades,” said David Gershon, chief executive of SuperDerivatives and a former head of exotic options at Barclays Capital.

Although forex traders make up the bulk of SuperDerivatives’ clients, the firm claims that more risk managers are using the service. SuperDerivatives counts 250 registered institutions among its clients, which include tier-one investment banks and hedge funds. A spokesman for the firm added that corporates are also a major target. Rosemary Court, a former director of forex sales and marketing for UBS Warburg, was appointed head of corporate sales for SuperDerivatives in Novermber last year, in a bid to win more corporate customers.

“Because of the difference that often exists between the theoretical values produced by most systems and the price that options actually trade at, portfolios can easily be over or undervalued. New accounting regulations, such as FAS 133, demand that an institution’s derivatives positions are accurately marked-to-market. SuperDerivatives allows this to be done independently,” added Gershon.