Comit buys International Financial Business Solutions

Comit, a fintech consulting subsidiary of telco Swisscom, has acquired International Financial Business Solutions (IFBS), a Zurich-based provider of securities finance and collateral management technology. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.IFBS was founded in August 1999 and started development its Finace package of securities lending, repo and OTC derivatives collateral management products in 2001. The suite was launched in in 2004.

Commenting on the deal, Felix Oegerli, CEO of IFBS, says: “Through our acquisition by Comit, we are able to access a more powerful distribution system, are closer to our clients and are able to rapidly scale up for project delivery. The size and quality of our parent, Swisscom, will also augment our value in the vendor risk assessments of our future clients.”

Comit says it will provide Finace customers with end-to-end implementation services as well as on-going support and project management.

Comit buys International Financial Business Solutions

Comit, a fintech consulting subsidiary of telco Swisscom, has acquired International Financial Business Solutions (IFBS), a Zurich-based provider of securities finance and collateral management technology. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Published: 03/05/2007 - 00:00

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Comit buys International Financial Business Solutions

Comit, a fintech consulting subsidiary of telco Swisscom, has acquired International Financial Business Solutions (IFBS), a Zurich-based provider of securities finance and collateral management technology. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.IFBS was founded in August 1999 and started development its Finace package of securities lending, repo and OTC derivatives collateral management products in 2001. The suite was launched in in 2004.

Commenting on the deal, Felix Oegerli, CEO of IFBS, says: “Through our acquisition by Comit, we are able to access a more powerful distribution system, are closer to our clients and are able to rapidly scale up for project delivery. The size and quality of our parent, Swisscom, will also augment our value in the vendor risk assessments of our future clients.”

Comit says it will provide Finace customers with end-to-end implementation services as well as on-going support and project management.

Felix Oegerli Details

Felix Oegerli Senior Executive, Talacher 41 CH-8039 Zurich Switzerland … felix.oegerli@ifbs.ch (E:Mail), +41.218.1414 (Switchboard number) …
www.taxtracker.com/externals.nsf/vwConName/80256927004E25FF8025691E00703251?OpenDocument

IFBS AG Zurich:
Felix Oegerli
Tel: +41-44 218 1414
Fax: +41-44 218 1418
email: felix.oegerli@ifbs.com

IFBS New York:
Tom Ricciardi
Tel: +1-212-332-7144
Fax: +1-212-332-7145
email: tom.ricciardi@ifbs.com
http://www.iflexsolutions.com/iflex/articles/PrivateBanking.aspx
http://www.iflexsolutions.com/iflex/media/PressRelease_Details.aspx?PressRel_id=11530

Comment

Laura Mooney, Metastorm

Published: 04/05/2007   Digg this Add to del.icio.us Tell a colleague

Compliance pain relief Laura Mooney, senior director, Metastorm on the role of business process management in financial services complianceSince the earliest days of commercial computing, no industry has been more adept in using information technology (IT) to improve performance and cut costs than the financial services sector. Historically, it has poured huge sums of money into systems and applications designed to support numerous functions and departments. In the past decade, however, the focus on IT deployment among financial services companies has shifted fundamentally. At one time, they looked to technology simply to automate existing, often paper-based, tasks and functions. Now, with the ever increasing number of industry regulations organisations are being forced to comply with, deployment is more likely to be informed by a more end-to-end approach to coordinating and streamlining core business processes. Ensuring compliance with the continuous stream of new regulations that has appeared over recent years has proved both complex and onerous for most organisations. Those in the financial services industry have been hit harder than most. But while burdensome, compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Basel II code, MIFID and anti-money laundering laws (among many others) is not an issue that can be side-stepped. Failure to demonstrate compliance can severely damage a financial services business its reputation, its balance sheet and even the liberty of company officers who are called upon to affirm that their organisation adheres to the new rules and regulations. Actually implementing the technology and processes required to demonstrate that a bank meets the strictures of numerous mandates demands a significant level of control over its processes and the way they are monitored and audited. Implemented well, business process management (BPM) provides an opportunity for financial services companies to eliminate many of the ‘pain points’ associated with achieving compliance - on an ongoing, long-term basis. BPM achieves this in two ways: through process definition and process monitoring. Process definition and monitoring are at the heart of compliance. Combined in BPM, they can improve ‘time to compliance’ and help counteract a bank’s tendency to re-invent the wheel for every new set of regulations (and every time an existing set is revised). BPM technology allows businesses to automate and standardise on processes that are both auditable and consistent. Acting as an orchestration layer to the myriad of disparate IT systems that are used in the course of a single business process, BPM applies business rules, enabling cross-silo automation of processes across the entire organisation. In this way, financial institutions can enforce processes so that all required steps are performed. Built-in authorisation and control mechanisms, meanwhile, ensure that only authorised personnel are able to perform certain actions within a business process. Using BPM, maintenance of processes is simplified, since the overall view of processes that BPM offers makes it possible to change one rule governing a process in one place - rather than in multiple IT systems — in response to a new regulation. Visibility into what is going on across a process is the key to controlling and managing it. BPM automatically captures information on a company’s processes, as required by a number of regulatory mandates, and creates an audit trail. Reporting and analysis tools can be used to explore that information, so that it is possible to get an overall perspective of how processes are running, as well as more granular detail about a specific process, or even a specific transaction. That information provides evidence of what was done, by whom, at what time, which can prove invaluable during an auditor’s review or simply to flag potential areas of improvement to internal managers. The audit trail includes not only process flows and actions taken, but also electronic copies of the documents and signatures at each stage in the process. The more mature BPM packages, meanwhile, make it possible to monitor key real-time activities via a dashboard. Continuous monitoring features allow users to set alerts or timed actions to ensure that critical issues are made visible for immediate action. When a process fails to complete and this failure poses a potential compliance risk, for example, that problem will be immediately flagged to managers. BPM is already helping many of the world’s leading financial services companies to make their core business processes ‘compliance-friendly’ and to satisfy external auditors that they have sufficient process control and monitoring in place. But the most forward-thinking companies are looking at leveraging those efforts to drive further, valuable process changes in their companies. In effect, the improved visibility and development of controls that compliance-focussed BPM brings has helped them identify further areas for process improvement, increased efficiency, and greater agility - freeing people from mundane tasks and empowering them to be more innovative.

http://www.finextra.com/fullfeature.asp?id=894

JPMorgan to build London’s biggest dealing rooms at new City HQ

US investment bank JPMorgan plans to build the largest trading floors in London at its new European headquarters in the City.JPMorgan has entered exclusive talks with property developer Hammerson over the construction of a one million square feet building on the site of the St Alphage House building owned by the City of London Corporation.

The new building will consolidate JPMorgan’s investment banking operations in one location and house 5200 investment bankers. The facility will feature four trading floors, each measuring 72000 square feet - making them the largest in London.

JPMorgan’s decision is seen as a victory for the Square Mile over Canary Wharf, the City’s rival development in docklands which houses many investment banks including Citigroup, Barclays, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley.

JPMorgan - which already employs staff at seven sites around the City - had also been considering a site in Canary Wharf for its investment banking operations but opted to build in the Square Mile. A spokesperson for the Canary Wharf Group told reporters that a number of other firms are looking into developing on the site that was being considered by JP Morgan, as well as in other parts of the docklands.

Michael Snyder, chairman of the policy committee of the City of London Corporation, says: “This new building and JPMorgan’s continued presence in the City will reinforce London’s pre-eminent position as Europe’s leading financial capital.”

A planning application for the new building will be submitted later this year with an expected start on site during 2008.

Earlier this week British banking group HSBC said it has agreed a deal with Spanish property company Metrovacesa for the sale and leaseback of its head office building in Canary Wharf for £1.09 billion, making it the largest single property deal in UK history.

Principia Partners upgrades structured finance platform

Principia Partners, a leading solution provider for the management and administration of structured finance operations, has just released Principia SFP Version 5.1.

The new release provides extensive standardized compliance reporting and accounting functionality for the rapidly expanding Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) and Securities Arbitrage Conduit markets.

Despite tightening spreads in the structured finance securities market, SIVs and innovative SIV-like structures such as SIV-lites have enjoyed a recent boom, climbing above $300 Billion in outstanding notes in 2007. The number of SIVs expanded 30% in 2006 and is expected to achieve stronger growth in 2007. Additionally, many securities arbitrage conduits, driven largely by regulatory changes, are adopting SIV compliance practices to enhance their return on capital. The success of the SIV business model has greatly contributed to the convergence of structured finance technologies and methodologies.

“As market requirements and practices have become more standardized, we are able to package a complete SIV management solution that covers a wide range of compliance reporting and operational needs out of the box,” states Dr. Douglas Long, EVP - Business Strategy at Principia. Using an intuitive interface, SIV managers can select and edit the standard suite of compliance reports covering cash outflows, portfolio composition, liquidity, market risk and capital adequacy and stress tests. The packaged SIV chart of accounts accommodates a broad range of accounting treatments, requiring little or no customization.

The added functionality seamlessly integrates with Principia’s market-tested deal capture, portfolio management and risk capabilities. This continuous end-to-end processing is critical because SIVs do not require costly liquidity backup facilities to guarantee shortfalls in settling maturing liabilities. SIVs qualify for this capital efficient approach by marking their portfolios, testing cashflow adequacy and monitoring credit and market risks on a daily basis. Thus they require far more robust and analytic portfolio management capabilities than other less dyrr less dynamic vehicles.

“To meet the stringent risk limits imposed by the ratings criteria, SIVs must be assured that analytics are consistent and no model noise (conflicts in valuations that can be created from disparate systems) can be tolerated,” states Long. “Furthermore, relying on lean operations teams typically much smaller than those in commercial banks, SIVs place a priority on supporting all assets, liabilities and derivatives on a single integrated platform focused on the specific requirements of advanced Structured Finance Operations. Principia SFP provides that comprehensive level of support.”

As a result of the heightened activity in this market, new and existing SIVs are focusing efforts to more diligently manage investment strategies and to reduce overall expenses. The new 5.1 release is designed to deliver comprehensive functionality and ease of implementation, increasing enterprise-wide efficiencies while reducing the technical barriers to entry into the SIV space. “Principia SFP is an end-to-end system that will enable managers to meet the challenges of cost reduction first during implementation and then on an ongoing basis by scaling with portfolio growth and driving all operational processing in an automated manner,” states Long.

SIVs are independent, bankruptcy-remote entities, often sponsored by large banks that capitalize on the arbitrage between the highly-rated investment grade securities that they purchase, such as asset-backed securities, and the shorter-term commercial paper and medium-term notes that they issue.

Principia’s latest release incorporates more than a decade of experience in providing industry expertise and innovative solutions to managers and administrators of SIVs.

http://www.finextra.com/fullpr.asp?id=14717