BACK OFFICE PROJECT

Winner: BNP Paribas and Checkfree with BNP Paribas Securities Services’ Global STP Platform

With activity across money markets and foreign exchange (FX) growing, BNP Paribas realised its manual processes would be pressed in the near future and that the timing was right to develop a straight-through-processing (STP) environment that could hugely increase efficiencies internally and offer new business advantages. Using the transaction processing management system CheckFree Tradeflow, the bank was able to provide STP across asset classes using a single STP hub for all global activity with electronic trade confirmation provided. By monitoring the transaction across its lifecycle, the bank has benefited from automation (reduced error rates and operational risk) and improved FX processing levels (doubled per month), and from an early return on investment. The likelihood of migrating all instruments to the platform and providing outsourced services in the future gives the bank reassurance – if any is needed – that the project has proven its case.

FRONT OFFICE PROJECT

Winner: BNP Paribas and Datasynapse with BNP Paribas Grid Project

Rather than coping with increased pressure on compute resources through extravagant overprovisioning, BNP Paribas decided to utilise its existing resources better. Working with Datasynapse and its GridServer product, the bank developed a grid computer infrastructure that its structured credit department went live with in March 2005. The project has allowed the bank to develop products in a much shorter timeframe than was previously possible. Thanks to the improvements in systems, credit derivatives can be priced in minutes whereas typical operations may take hours, and complex risk scenarios can be applied that were previously not possible. As the project did not require any major investment in new hardware, the current issue facing many banks – expansion of data centres – was not a problem. The roll out was straightforward and well implemented, the return on investment strong. Expansion of the grid is expected across a number of geographies, and the increased productivity combined with a reduced total cost of ownership was seen as a great realisation of the technology’s potential.

BUY-SIDE PROJECT

Winner: SunGard with SunGard Front Arena

Hedge funds can be expected to have expertise, although this tends to be more in trading than technology. In an example one fund, started in 2005, set itself the target of covering all major asset classes globally and with potential for growth in volumes and product complexity in the near future. With some tough conditions to sign up for, SunGard worked closely with the fund’s technical staff to implement Front Arena. A tight deadline of 90 days was given to deliver results that included development of interfaces to prime brokers, external systems and fund administrators – the roll out took about two thirds of that time. Collaboration was vital to the project’s success amid challenges that were only overcome through teamwork. SunGard also benefited from the experience in improving its abilities to provide for hedge funds in the future.

SELL-SIDE PROJECT

Winner: Trade Ideas Ltd with Repository and Distribution Centre

As noted for the Innovation of the Year award also won by this entry, four investment banks working together successfully is certainly innovative but implementing a successful project with all of the co-ordination required is no small task either. Its provision and distribution of trade ideas is a simple yet worthwhile endeavour, removing unnecessary inefficiency from the process, giving benefit to the sell-side but also assisting the buy-side and potentially other participants, such as software vendors.

Highly commended: HVB Systems with ACPM Data warehouse

CASH MANAGEMENT PROJECT

Winner: American Express Bank with eAccess Private Label

Lack of access to euro clearing or the absence of a multi-currency demand deposit account system can limit a bank’s potential in the cash management arena. That is problematic for smaller players that wish to provide a full service for customers but that are unable or unwilling to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Having taken systems from a number of providers, American Express Bank (AEB) can now offer an end-to-end solution for banks to provide increased services to corporate customers. Given the pressure on regional/local players from global banks, this could be a real advantage, utilising AEB’s own infrastructure to provide a private labelled front end so that the user bank does not have to develop or invest in further back office resources. In building the offering, AEB has pulled together a number of systems successfully to reach a growing base of banks that are looking for assistance with this issue.

Highly commended: Deutsche Bank with Customer Self-Administration (CAAA)

OPERATIONAL RISK PROJECT

Winner: Sophis and Royal Bank of Canada with Sophis RISQUE deployment

To move away from local risk positioning and on to a single global platform covering three timezones is a big task for any organisation. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) decided to use Sophis RISQUE as its platform, consolidating a variety of systems and running it across a single relational database. The effects of the deployment – such as automating transaction processing to minimise risk and allowing staff to focus on more value-added tasks, increasing data integrity and data flow consistency – combined to decrease operational risk, decrease cost and support 24/5 trading on a single platform. Tackling significant challenges on the way, such as the migration of trading volumes from multiple platforms, the need for demanding levels of scalability and the need for separate reporting across disparate functions, RBC and Sophis have come through with flying colours.

TRADE FINANCE PROJECT

Winner: Citigroup Corporate and Investment Bank with Citibank Handlowy Social Benefit Cards

Having noted a need for efficient cash transfer from a number of government and public sector clients to replace the current methods of distributing cash via staffed desks and manual processing, Citigroup saw a simple technology innovation as the solution. Taking Visa Electron cards as the base (their requirement for transactions to be fully authorised online removes the risk of debit), the bank created a top-up card that can be issued to users, whether as part of social benefit or scholarship schemes, with a fixed amount loaded on each month (or in accordance with the payment schedule). With the public institution loading each card and then confirming value levels with its bank, the end-user does not have to have an account with the bank and so suffers minimal disruption in changing their method of collection. It is a fully customisable system so it is suitable for use in many circumstances; it increases security for the beneficiary and distributor, reduces cost for the administrator and through use of electronic payments provides data with customer relationship management potential. This is a straightforward solution for a clear challenge – well delivered.

Highly commended: Bank BPH with TradeNet – Dynamics and Independence in Business

WHOLESALE FRAUD PREVENTION PROJECT

Winner: NetEconomy with ERASE Financial Crime Suite

Whether purchasing or building fraud detection measures, banks must ensure their platform is sturdy and secure enough to support a particular application. By running its anti-money laundering and fraud system ERASE on Windows, NetEconomy was able to reduce the total cost of ownership for a group of European banks and complete installation of the monitoring system covering 18 million transactions per day within three months. The group also benefited from using one system across multiple banks with lower overall implementation costs and the ability to aggregate transaction data in one database environment, broadening the view of risk. The judges believed that this project was worthy of note and created a category for it.

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