South Africa's leading developer of investment management solutions, Smacsoft Group, is enjoying a successful foray into the STP market by scooping up five major contracts with some of South Africa's leading financial institutions.
Just six months after launching its financial messaging arm, the group has concluded deals with financial heavy weights Nedcor Investment Bank, Investec Guinness Flight Global Asset Management, FinSource, Mercury Alpha Capital and Ansbacher Investment Managers.
"Straight Through Processing is the only way to go for companies in the financial services sector. Where transactions have been handled - and are still being handled - manually and at great cost, we are increasing efficiencies and saving our clients millions of Rands, by automating the processes, cutting down time, risk and cost," said Smacsoft Group director JB Maree.
He said the company's financial messaging solutions help to build strong, reliable communication links between companies, enabling them to process transactions efficiently and accurately in a secure environment.
The lack of effective STP is expected to cost the global securities industry between $5- and $10-billion every year, according to Andy Howard, FinSource director in charge of asset management operations, which has just installed Smacsoft's STP system to facilitate cash and non-cash buy and sells.
"FinSource has achieved elements of STP in many areas involving external communication links, such as trade confirmation, trade notification to custodian banks, automated settlements, automated daily bank reconciliations and automated scrip reconciliations, using top class technologies and software."
Also enjoying increased efficiencies using Smacsoft's messaging solutions is Nedcor Investment Bank. Ivan Robert-York, General Manager of Information Technology, said: "NIB has achieved a 99% acceptance rate for Swift messages since inception in September last year. This is well above the benchmark hit rates of between 40% and 60%."
Maree said the Smacsoft Group's STP division is well on track to realizing its revenue target of R3 million turnover within the first year. Organic growth will be driven by strategic product development and the company's expansion into new markets, he said.
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