A new initiative that will revolutionise the South African financial services industry was launched on Thursday (26 June 2003) by ensemble, a complete technology solutions provider to the financial services industry, in joint venture with Paris-headquartered electronic trading solutions provider GL TRADE.
Using Decalog, an investment management software system distributed and supported by ensemble in South Africa, local asset managers can now connect straight through to brokers in more than 60 markets worldwide and route their orders to them in electronic format.
"The automatic rules and workflow-based routing of messages between asset managers and brokers will eliminate the paper trail and reduce manual processes, resulting in less errors. It will thereby increase operational efficiency and reduce operational risk," says Ettie Takacs, ensemble`s CEO. "Electronic connectivity will allow same day confirmation of trades and unit price calculation, and is also a major development in and condition for enabling the settlement of trades three business days after the transaction date, as opposed to the five days it currently takes."
The groundbreaking initiative was driven by ensemble, which recognised the inherent connection between FIX-compliant GL NET, GL TRADE`s global broker network, and Decalog, which has embedded FIX capabilities.
The Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol is widely used internationally. It is a messaging standard developed specifically for the real-time electronic exchange of securities transactions. The public-domain specification is owned and maintained by FIX Protocol Ltd.
Six of South Africa`s largest asset management firms use Decalog and therefore have access to the industry-leading solution, says Takacs.
The Decalog software system, a SunGard product, has a well-established track record both in this country and overseas. The system comprises an integrated suite of modules: Decalog Manager for portfolio management and performance; Decalog Compliance for pre- and post-trade compliance; and Decalog Trader for order management and trading.
"By streamlining and automating critical elements of the investment management process, this front- and middle-office processing solution enables our clients to run their businesses more profitably, while increasing customer satisfaction and improving return on assets under management," says Takacs. Gerard Barnardt, head of IT Applications at Sanlam Investment Management (SIM), says his company has been using Decalog for about 31/2 years, and is currently planning on upgrading to Version 5, the latest release.
The asset management company, which runs the program in a Unix environment using Sybase as the database, utilises Decalog`s order management, compliance, portfolio management modules, and to a lesser extent its performance and attribution module
Barnardt says the product`s capabilities in integrating portfolio pre-trade compliance and order management is very important: it`s one of the main reasons that SIM uses Decalog. The integrated system makes it easy for a portfolio manager to see any pending orders that have been entered into the system, but have not yet been executed, he says.
Since its establishment in 1996, ensemble has been providing local and international financial market participants with customer-differentiated technology systems. Its primary focus is in the areas of investment and securities management, treasury, risk, financial management and financial market communications.
The partnership with GL TRADE, a leading provider of financial data feed, trading and clearing solutions, is the latest of the strategic alliances that ensemble has established with providers of internationally recognised best-of-breed products.
Combined with ensemble`s own technology experience and intimate knowledge of the local financial market, these alliances enable the company to deliver international solutions to the domestic market.
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