Front Capital Systems, an operating unit of SunGard, today released a new version of FRONT ARENA. Version 2.1 adds real-time cross-asset class P&L functionality and exception-based processing for multiple asset classes including equities, credit derivatives, interest rate derivatives and fixed income, providing front-to-back straight-through processing (STP).
"With the latest release of FRONT ARENA we are delivering a cross-asset class system with greater depth and flexibility," explained Mats Lillienberg, chief technology officer at Front. "It's a standard package that also lays the foundation for the migration to a service-oriented architecture and offers support for Linux. It will help our customers benefit both from the easy-to-use functional enhancements as well as the improved scalability and performance of their systems."
Claudio Camplani, head of Global Treasury at BDG Lugano, said, "With the new functionality of FRONT ARENA 2.1 we were able to migrate our previous in-house extensions to the core product with increased flexibility provided by the FRONT ARENA Trading Manager. By having more functionality in the core, performance has been enhanced. Less reliance on extensions will help us to take on new releases faster as well as helping to lower the cost of system ownership."
FRONT ARENA 2.1 helps banks to evaluate profit and loss in terms of risk factor changes. It provides answers to questions such as: "What proportion of total P&L is due to changes in time, interest rates and credit spreads?" This type of analysis provides traders and risk managers with immediate feedback about the factors driving their profits and is particularly useful for those trading structured products. It furthermore provides a useful tool for reconciling differences in profit and loss calculations and for highlighting certain processing problems during the end-of-day procedures.
For the back-office, FRONT ARENA 2.1 introduces the Settlement Manager, an application that manages high settlement volumes in an exception-based environment to support all OTC traded asset classes. Transparency is improved as information about trades can be sliced up into more manageable pieces using work queues.
A number of areas have been streamlined to help enhance the user experience and simplify data access, as well as improve security. All permission settings are managed centrally and all FRONT ARENA components share the same authentication mechanism, which helps to further reduce administration costs.
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Front Capital Systems is a leading provider of integrated, straight-through processing solutions for sales, trading, risk management and administration of equities, derivatives, interest rates, credit, money markets, fixed income and foreign exchange. Front supplies systems and services to more than 150 financial organisations and supports over 9,000 users worldwide. For more information, visit www.front.com
SunGard
SunGard is a global leader in integrated software and processing solutions, primarily for financial services. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 20,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world's 50 largest financial services companies. SunGard (NYSE:SDS) is a member of the S&P 500 and has annual revenue of $3 billion. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.
Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo, Front Capital Systems and FRONT ARENA are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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