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.”

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.”

Remote working during market turmoil has not affected our clients using Salerio

London, 22 June 2020 - corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, reports that its clients have enjoyed uninterrupted trade matching and settlement during lockdown – even when trading volumes suddenly spiked.

 

One example is that of leading investment management company Baillie Gifford. The Edinburgh-based firm was using proprietary post-trade processing systems before choosing Salerio in 2018 and they believe that their smooth transition to remote working conditions, without any interruption to the service they provided to their investors, was testament to the software they had installed from corfinancial.

In March we experienced a huge increase in equity, bond and FX trades. For example, our bond trading volumes more than doubled from the previous month and over a seven-day period we had more than 500 bond trades alone. In April, our bond trading volumes went up even further, by almost another 50 percent,” said Louise Laidlaw, Head of Settlements, Baillie Gifford. “It didn’t matter how many trades came through; we knew we had the ability to cope using Salerio. Working remotely, even with these exceptional trading volumes, has had no impact on our operations whatsoever. The transition to home working was seamless and this theme came across strongly in feedback from my Settlements team.”

Since lockdown, trade settlement teams have needed secure software that enabled them to adapt to both multiple working locations and unique market conditions. Salerio was designed to handle unprecedented surges in trading volumes even while operating remotely.

Bruce Hobson, Chief Executive at corfinancial. “The system has been able to provide a remote service at the level that gold standard clients like Baillie Gifford expect, and this standard has not faltered during the unprecedented market conditions we are faced with today.”

Where Next For The Middle Office?

Middle Office

Consolidated exception management, APIs and the evolution of the middle office.

Within every process across the front, middle and back office, there are anomalies (known in asset management parlance as ‘exceptions’). Compliance, risk, corporate actions, fund accounting, Investment Book of Records, trade processing, client reporting – there are exceptions at every turn. Many asset managers have different systems for all of these processes, each generating their own list of exceptions. Even within each stage of the investment process there may well be more than one system reporting the anomalies.

Baillie Gifford selects corfinancial for global trade processing

Business

LONDON, 18 February 2019 - corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, is supporting Baillie Gifford in establishing an end-to-end post-trade operating model.

After a detailed market evaluation process, Baillie Gifford selected corfinancials post-trade solution salerio to automate its global trade processing.

“Baillie Gifford is unique in the UK in being a large-scale investment business that has remained an independent private partnership. This ownership structure has allowed us to keep our efforts focused entirely on our clients and their investments,” said Louise Laidlaw, Head of Settlements at Baillie Gifford. We decided that it was time to transition our existing operating model to a strategic solution that encompassed the whole trade processing lifecycle. Not only were we looking for a comprehensive, automated exception management system, but also the right people to work with.

Bruce Hobson, CEO at corfinancial: “Today, investment management organizations are under increasing pressure to reduce risks, cut costs and bring efficiencies to post-trade processes. Baillie Gifford recognizes the benefits that straight-through-processing and scalability can deliver in helping the firm serve its growing international client base.”