BITA Risk signs Charles Stanley as first ‘BITA ESG Manager’ client

ESG - Environmental Social Governance

London, February 2021 – BITA Risk, part of corfinancial, announces that Charles Stanley, one of the UK’s leading wealth management firms, has signed up for the BITA ESG Manager application.

BITA Risk built its reputation on taking complex risk and portfolio data and making it highly accessible within its efficient portfolio management applications. Now it has applied this approach to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investment, automating many manual steps through exception management and integrating key data as part of the client profiling and investment processes.

Charles Stanley’s COO, Michael Bennett, commented: “BITA ESG Manager has taken the complexity of ESG factor data and presented it with such clarity that it can be efficiently managed and monitored across large numbers of our clients, forming an integral part of our investment strategy.”

Charles Stanley’s investment managers will benefit from detailed visualisations, helping them to understand exposures, check preference conflicts and assess the impact of ESG-driven changes on risk, yield and return.

Daryl Roxburgh, President and Global Head, BITA Risk: “Recognising a client’s ESG preferences and understanding asset exposures are key to effective portfolio management and analysis. Using exception management to identify any conflicts is the most efficient way of keeping a portfolio within mandate and this, together with innovative client reporting, is how BITA ESG Manager can manage the process with flexibility and on the scale required by Charles Stanley.”

corfinancial partners with data engineering specialists Digiterre

December 2020 – corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, announces today that it is collaborating with Digiterre, a software and data engineering consultancy, to build the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) functionality for its BITA Wealth platform.

Ian Murrin, CEO and Founder, Digiterre, said: “We are delighted to collaborate with corfinancial to help build a technology solution for investment managers who increasingly demand the integration of ESG factors into their investment processes. We look forward to providing advanced software and data engineering services to complement corfinancial’s deep domain knowledge and expertise in investment management. The end result is products that are both technically proficient and transformative in nature.”

corfinancial has been significantly investing in its flagship solutions in recent years, acknowledging that the software world needs niche firms like Digiterre with cutting edge skillsets that can help place a product ahead of the changing market demand.

Bruce Hobson, CEO, corfinancial, said: “Digiterre’s specialist data transformation skills and our understanding of what wealth management firms require in order to reduce manual processing and improve the client experience is a powerful combination. We look forward to further projects with Digiterre to ensure that our products are forward-looking and best-in-class.”

corfinancial: Salerio software ready for OASYS decommissioning

December 2020 - corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, announces today that its Salerio post-trade system is now fully tested and ready to assist firms in the migration away from DTCC’s legacy OASYS™ platform.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is a post-trade financial services company providing clearing and settlement services to the financial markets. The firm has confirmed plans to decommission its OASYS™ solution by October 2021, resulting in the compulsory migration of users to its CTM™ processing model in order to continue the automated processing of US domestic trades.

DTCC recently announced that a small number of financial services technology providers have agreed to certify their interfaces in support of enhanced US trade flow capabilities in DTCC’s CTM™ service. Salerio is now a certified solution to facilitate the transition away from OASYS, having successfully completed its conformance testing with DTCC.

David Veal, Senior Executive, Client Solutions, corfinancial: “Working as an early adopter partner with DTCC throughout the second half of this year ensured that we were well prepared for the modifications that they were applying to their CTM utility. Salerio has been updated with the OASYS parity functionality. Our solution is quick to implement, due to our standard model approach, fully functional CTM connectivity and workflow,” added Veal. “Salerio clients that require this functionality ahead of the October 2021 deadline are good to go.”

Prevention rather than cure Is best way to tackle trade settlement management

Trade Failure

Buy-side believes prevention rather than cure is best way to tackle trade settlement.

Many people are aware that the European Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) that introduces a Settlement Discipline Regime (SDR) has been delayed by another year to February 2022. The deferment, however, should not be seen as a reason to avoid introducing better controls and processes now. On the contrary, firms are recognising that preventing trade failures rather than managing them is best practice, irrespective of SDR being implemented.

SureVu - Trade Failure

Baillie Gifford migrates the processing of its futures transactions to corfinancial’s post-trade system, salerio

London, 27 July 2020 – 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.”