Ten More Spanish Banks Select SunGard’s BancWare
SunGard has been making great strides into Spain. The company announced earlier this month that ten more Spanish savings banks have chosen SunGard’s BancWare for asset liability management (ALM) to help monitor and manage their interest rate, foreign exchange and liquidity risk. They will also be using BancWare for data integration, which is fundamental to effective balance sheet management.
SunGard is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and in June it announced the first stage of performance optimization enhancements undertaken in collaboration with Intel Corporation and Microsoft for BancWare ALM. This early work resulted in improving the performance of BancWare ALM on 64-bit Intel architecture and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), to help customers achieve greater efficiency and cost savings through faster-performing and more scalable software and analytics.
SunGard took a three-pronged approach in Phase 1 of the project to enhance BancWare ALM’s hardware, database and calculations. The enhancements will help customers of BancWare ALM improve scalability and performance. Results in a test environment showed up to 45 percent faster computations.
The Spanish regional savings banks, all part of the Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorros (CECA), will individually implement BancWare for ALM at their respective locations across Spain. Data from their core banking systems will be cleansed, sorted and fed into the ALM model for analysis in order to run calculations and produce reports detailing future earnings based on customer behavior and rate predictions. This information will help each of the banks to make strategic business decisions to help improve their risk/return profile. With the addition of these banks as customers, SunGard’s BancWare will now be used to manage a total of over €2 trillion in assets across the balance sheets of more than forty banks and savings banks in Spain.
www.sungard.com/bancware
Jefferies Prime Brokerage Partners With Linedata
Jefferies & Company prime brokerage will add Linedata’s LongView Trading Order Management System to its platform for hedge fund clients. Jefferies & Company is a full-service investment bank and institutional securities company focused on growing and midsized companies and their investors.
“In the longer-term, Linedata’s Long-View will help Jefferies provide the internal infrastructure hedge funds need to grow and to differentiate themselves in the market,” said Jack Wiener, executive vice president of Linedata Services.
www.jefferies.com
www.linedata.com
IP Commerce Pushes Reseller Program
IP Commerce, one of the driving forces behind the recently launched PASS Consortium, which offers Vista-based solutions for small businesses, has launched a partner program called Commerce Link initially aimed at Microsoft resellers.
Through the program, resellers can offer a variety of a la carte or packaged services to specific customer segments within the small- and medium-sized business market. Previously, IP Commerce only offered these services to banks and financial institutions. The offerings include the PASS Commerce Center services from the PASS Consortium; Quick-Payment 2007, a user-friendly bank card processing application from BIG Software that integrates directly into Microsoft Office Accounting 2007; ChargeLink, an application from Syntegration for processing credit cards from PCs through QuickBooks with complete/receive payment recording functionality; and Desktop Remote Deposit from Vault Software which allows merchants to obtain payments and make deposits from their PC, saving time traveling to and from the bank.
http://commlink.ipcommerce.com
Microsoft Buys Parlano
Microsoft has agreed to acquire Parlano, a Chicago-based provider of instant messaging technology with strong inroads in the financial services industry, for an undisclosed sum.
Parlano’s MindAlign enterprise instant messaging platform is used by a number of Tier 1 banks including UBS, ANZ Bank, ABN AMRO, Standard Chartered Bank and The Royal Bank of Scotland. The business collaboration tool is also used by companies in the call center and technology industries.
The MindAlign application was originally created by developers at UBS Warburg in 1995. UBS later spun off the unit as a separate company and sold a 75 percent interest to Divine Inc in 2000. In September 2001 Divine purchased a further 21 percent equity interest, taking its stake in the company to 96 percent. However after Divine filed for bankruptcy in 2003 the technology was acquired by venture firms Golden Gate Capital and Oak Investment Partners for an undisclosed amount.
Microsoft says following the acquisition it will add Parlano’s group chat functionality as a new feature of its Office Communications Server and Office Communicator products. Microsoft also plans to offer group chat as part of the standard client access license for Office Communications Server 2007 Software Assurance customers.
www.parlano.com
Formicary Becomes Microsoft Certified Partner
Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy and software firm specializing in providing solutions for the financial services industry, has achieved certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program, confirming its long-term commitment to developing solutions using and integrating with Microsoft technologies.
Formicary already has an established reputation working with Microsoft technologies and has a large number of highly qualified and experienced consultants working on software solutions and bespoke client projects. To attain certification, Formicary gained competency in different specialist areas and demonstrated its expertise with client references from three investment banks. It is currently focusing on information worker solutions – specializing in unified communications, portals, and collaboration; and custom development solutions – concentrating on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1, and Mobile Technologies.
www.formicary.net
Brazil’s Mellon Serviços Financeiros Selects Charles River
Charles River Development has announced that Mellon Serviços Financeiros DTVM S/A, the fund administrator for more than 70 percent of the independent fund managers in Brazil, has selected the Charles River Investment Management System (IMS) to automate compliance monitoring across its investment operations.
Charles River IMS will provide real-time pre-trade, post-execution and end-of-day compliance monitoring for all asset classes. Mellon Serviços Financeiros’ users will use the system’s easy-to-use rule-building and maintenance tools that ensure investment compliance with Brazilian regulatory rules as well as client mandates.
The firm said it chose Charles River for its understanding of Brazil’s workflow and language requirements and its flexible, easy-to-use system. Charles River has been in Brazil since 2003.
www.crd.com
www.mellonservicosfinanceiros.com.br
Microsoft Aids South African Startup
Imagination, a South African start-up company that will provide life insurance, banking and healthcare services to citizens unable to participate in traditional financial services, has implemented a fully scalable, cost-effective and flexible IT system based on Microsoft technology. This will enable the company to offer value-for-money financial services products to the 40 million South Africans who at present only have access to inadequate savings arrangements, loans at inflated rates and costly funeral plans.
With the support of community organizations such as labor unions and churches, the company aims to make life cover, savings accounts, loans and other financial products affordable to more people as well as design products more appropriate to their needs, for example, by taking into account that customers may make small or irregular contributions.
The IT system, which is being used by 20 people within the organization and will soon provide Web access to all its customers, was built in collaboration with Microsoft Certified Partner Fourge and the Microsoft Technology Centre. It uses Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation and Microsoft Visual Studio Team System.
In particular, Microsoft SQL Server has been deployed to hold and receive client information and monitor customer accounts. It offers the company the ability to react quickly to market changes by adapting its financial services offerings, which in turn will support the firm’s continuous business growth. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Microsoft ASP.NET are being used to create Web pages containing product information and customer account sign-up features.
XSP Partners with Web Services Integration Limited to Offer Withholding Tax Reclamation
Corporate actions software provider XSP has formed a partnership with Web Services Integration Ltd., whose Xceptor Tax Hub product offers withholding tax reclaims processing. Through the partnership, XSP software will integrate with the Xceptor Tax Hub product to automate the withholding tax reclaim process within the corporate actions lifecycle.
Both companies’ respective solutions are built on a common technology platform using .NET architecture in a Web services-enabled environment for easy integration and flexibility.
XSP’s v5 platform automates corporate actions processing from data management to notification and response capture to entitlement management. Re-engineered using advanced Microsoft technologies, the XSP v5 platform is built around a service-oriented architecture, using .NET components and Web services for global enterprise-wide processing. The Xceptor Tax Hub product integrates within its customers’ operational infrastructure and automates each step of the reclaim process, including data management, documentation management, workflow, query handling, forecasting and reconciliation.
www.xsp.com
SlaterLabs Signs Two-Year Support Contract with Microsoft
SlaterLabs has signed a two-year technology support contract with Microsoft, under which the SlaterLabs development team and leading technologists from Microsoft will work side by side to assure the performance, scalability, reliability and quality of the SlaterLabs’ Etude Programme, a mission-critical banking software application suite developed exclusively on Microsoft .NET.
The SlaterLabs and Microsoft teams will work in Europe and the United States over an initial period of two years with options to extend. During this time, SlaterLabs will use the latest software, development tools and methodologies from Microsoft, allowing its developers to conform to the highest standards of performance, reliability and quality for a .NET-based enterprise software application. Microsoft will also assist by reviewing, advising and verifying that the SlaterLabs design and development remains consistent with Microsoft’s Best Practices.
The Etude Programme from SlaterLabs is a collaborative program whereby charter customers join the SlaterLabs development team, input their country and specific requirements and prepare their in-house teams for implementations. Post-implementation, SlaterLabs provides on-going country compliance development, enhancements and releases under the Microsoft “ClickOnce” program.
www.slaterlabs.com
Wolters Kluwer Ships Microsoft .NET Version of Expere
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced that it has released a Microsoft .NET-compatible version of its Expere Integrated Enterprise (Expere IE) solution to make the company’s compliance content management solution available to a wider range of financial organizations.
Expere IE helps financial organizations overcome decentralized approaches to compliance. Using Expere IE, financial organizations can use a single compliance content management solution to unite multiple existing documentation systems and produce compliance documents across multiple business lines, such as mortgage, home equity and consumer lending.
“By introducing the .NET version of Expere IE to lenders, Wolters Kluwer Financial Services is giving them continued flexibility in selecting the tools that work best for their business,” said Ken Newton, executive vice president of banking for Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.
www.wolterskluwer.com
Clear2Pay Delivers Open Payments Framework on Microsoft Platforms
Clear2Pay, a provider of payment solutions for financial institutions, has announced its Open Payments Framework (OPF) and payments solutions derived off this environment, such as the Bank Payment Hub and the Corporate Payment Hub, are available for Microsoft platforms.
The OPF is a library of component building blocks built entirely on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivering common, reusable services on which to build a wide array of payment solutions. The OPF’s availability on Microsoft means banks, their corporate clients and other payments service providers who have Microsoft environments may fully benefit from the core OPF features. Banks who white-label the Corporate Payment Hub (an OPF derivative) can offer their corporate clients a low-cost, centralized enterprise payments processing environment to enhance corporate to bank connectivity.
“The Open Payments Framework (OPF) and its derivative solutions are all based on open standards, because banks and corporations must be able to choose whatever technology platform best fits their own requirements,” says Mark Hartley, vice president strategy and marketing at Clear2Pay. “We are indeed migrating a number of customers to a Microsoft environment. Enabling the OPF on top of the Microsoft platform extends the choice available to our customers and again proves the OPF is a truly open platform.”
Sheida Hadji-Ashrafi, wordwide industry manager payments at Microsoft adds: “We are very pleased to see that Clear2Pay is utilizing our technology and products such as Microsoft BizTalk Server to provide its customers with a broader set of functionality for messaging, including message validation and transformation, business process orchestration and management, business activity monitoring and business rules management at price points that also help them stay ahead of the changing economics of the payments business.”
www.clear2pay.com
Fiserv-CheckFree Aims for Both Core Processing and Online Lead
Fiserv, with more than 17,000 clients worldwide is a major provider of core processing solutions for US banks, credit unions and thrifts. CheckFree has always excelled in the electronic billing and payment and financial e-commerce space, and with its recent acquisition of Corillian, it now serves 21 of the top 25 financial institutions, more than 40 million online banking consumers, more than 31 million electronic billing and payment consumers, and more than 250,000 small businesses.
Together the two firms could be a powerful force in both core processing and e-commerce. That’s what Fiserv had in mind when it announced plans to acquire CheckFree in a transaction valued at $4.4 billion early last month.
Referring to a “strategic transformation” toward tighter integration between core processing and e-commerce services, Fiserv president and CEO Jeffery Yabuki said, “CheckFree’s industry-leading payment and Internet banking capabilities will significantly accelerate our strategic transformation, extending our service platform to the largest financial institutions.” He added, “An important objective of the transaction is to tightly integrate electronic bill payment and settlement capabilities with our core account processing and risk management solutions to create a unique value proposition unrivaled in the marketplace today.”
CheckFree chairman and CEO Pete Kight also noted the complementary nature of the acquisition and potential for integration, saying CheckFree’s products would “round out” Fiserv’s offering and its ability to deliver “solutions that address the challenges of an evolving US payments landscape and help facilitate the growth of the managed accounts industry.”
Kight will continue to be employed by Fiserv and will join the firm’s board of directors.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. After closing, the combined company will have pro-forma revenue of about $6 billion and employ more than 27,000 associates worldwide.
www.fiserv.com
www.checkfree.com