Risk.net September 2017

RISK MANAGEMENT • DERIVATIVES • REGULATION

Best cloud-basedservices provider

Reprinted from

1 risk.net September 2017

Over the last year, interactions between financial institutions and technology vendors have centred on regulatory compli-ance, improving efficiency, reducing costs and seizing emerging business opportunities. Regional players are not only reacting to new local rules, but in many cases also aiming to meet European and US regulations as they extend their business globally. Many of the new rules, such as the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), the Interna-

tional Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 17 and the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II), require complex calculations and frequent reporting, driving the need for efficiency and high performance. And everywhere there is a focus on cost and rationalising IT infrastructure.

Singapore-based Catena Technologies, which scored particularly well across a number of technological and support categories and came sixth overall, is focused on the Asia-Pacific market and is especially alert to local needs. “Hong Kong Phase 2 trade reporting was a major challenge for clients over the past year, given that the number of product types to be reported increased by an order of magnitude, along with the new requirement of valuation reporting,” says chief executive Aaron Hallmark.

The company has increased the level of automation in its TRACE cloud-based trade reporting and analytics platform, helping clients to shift to real-time reporting, which is increasingly important under new local and global regulations. “The Hong Kong Trade Repository is challenging to implement automated reporting for,” says Hallmark. “It requires special lifecycle event-level reporting with very particular sequential controls, and it also has unique rules for the amendment of reporting data. Our real-time, lifecycle event-driven data sourcing architecture lends itself perfectly to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority reporting model, and our new post-submission workflow management tools make it much easier for our clients to deal with the unique rules for data amendments.”

Catena has been improving its validation processes to ensure the quality of trade data before it is reported, in order to help clients increase the efficiency of their reporting and avoid mis-reporting or under-reporting which can result in punitive actions by regula-tors. “We have developed a trade repository simulator that replicates the validations applied by the trade repository, and we have further extended that simulator to cover additional regulatory standards, in order to help our clients pre-validate their submissions before they are ever submitted,” says Hallmark.

“At the same time, we want to help clients ensure that data coming out of the repository to the regulators is high-quality as well. So we have extended our TRACE Reconciliation framework to support multiple jurisdictions and to be able to reconcile between not only the positions held with the trade repository and the firm’s own source data, but also to any arbitrary third-party data source, such as a back-office report or a counterparty position report.”

To help their clients comply with changing regulations and cut costs, vendors are having to exploit the latest high-performance technologies to cope with the complex-ity and volume of calculations and improve efficiency. On top of cloud computing, AAD and in-memory data cubes, highly ranked vendors are also using graphics processing units (GPUs) for fast parallel processing of calculations, packaging new functionality as ‘microservices’ that can be easily integrated into existing platforms, and pursuing ‘agile’ software development with regular and frequent delivery of new capabilities for quicker and more customised deployment.

With many compliance deadlines in the next few years, the vendors that continue to succeed are likely to be those that combine effective use of these leading-edge tech-nologies with a deep understanding of the business and regulatory issues and a strong partnership approach to their clients. ■

Best cloud-based services providerCatena Technologies

Provider 1 Murex2 Finastra3 FIS4 Calypso5 Moody’s Analytics6 Catena Technologies7 Fenics8 IBM Risk Analytics9 Bloomberg10 Thomson Reuters

Overall: All categories

2risk.net

Catena Technologies Pte Ltd specialises in architecture, designand delivery of advanced technology solutions for the financialservices industry. Based in Singapore, the company has workedwith customers across the world, including the US, UK, Japan,Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore and China. Catena Technologiescombines in-depth knowledge of the financial markets withexpertise in implementing cutting-edge solutions.

About Catena Technologies

Best cloud-based services provider Provider1 Catena Technologies2 Murex3 FIS 4 Finastra5 Calypso

Back-office trading systems Provider1= Finastra1= Murex3 Catena Technologies4 FIS 5 Calypso

Application service provider Provider1 Murex2 Calypso3 Catena Technologies4 Finastra5 FIS

Implementation efficiency Provider1 Murex2 Catena Technologies3 Calypso4 Finastra5 FIS

System architecture Provider1 Murex2 Calypso3 Catena Technologies4 Finastra5 FIS

Best innovativespecialist vendor Provider1 ActiveViam (Formerly Quartet FS)2 Catena Technologies3 GFI Fenics4 Numerix5 306T

“We have developed a trade repository simulator that replicates the validations applied by the trade repository, and we have further extended that simulator to cover additional regulatory standards, in order to help our clients pre-validate their submissions before they are ever submitted”

Aaron Hallmark, Catena Technologies

For more information, contact:Catena Technologies Pte Ltd3 Phillip Street#10–01 Royal Group BuildingSingapore 048693T +65 6100 0881www.catena-technologies.com