SmartStream also had a major product announcement at the SIBOS conference in Toronto.
SmartStream Technologies and Credit Suisse have expanded their invoice processing agreement so that the vendor will be handling the listed derivatives brokerage fees, officials from both companies announced at the SWIFT SIBOS event in Toronto this week.
SmartStream also unveiled at SIBOS the latest version of its TLM Reconciliations Premium solution.
The bank will be using SmartStream’s proprietary transaction execution fees and expense management software. The software program encompasses the receipt of invoices, automatic fee calculation, accruals, reconciliation and payment, vendor officials say.
The expansion began in February of this year as an extension of a managed service solution for the processing of over-the-counter (OTC) fixed income derivatives, U.S.-listed equity options and cash equities that began in June 2016.
The main benefit to this approach is the centralization of cost management and the streamlining of the invoicing operation, which can vary greatly among counterparties to a transaction.
In addition to Credit Suisse, the derivatives execution and clearing (DEC) business of BNP Paribas Corporate and Investment Banking also announced that it has implemented SmartStream’s TLM Fees and Expense Management (FEMS) solution for two key objectives:
- To control and reconcile payable brokerage fees;
- And invoice issuance to execute commissions for DEC clients
“FEMS will consolidate all fees which will be reconciled against invoices received. The solution will automate the invoice control process by managing the increase in volume growth and targeting essentially the detection and resolution of disputes and an acceleration of processing and payment turnaround time. Also, the solution will fully support the execution and commission billing process from DEC to its clients,” bank and vendor officials say via the SmartStream press release.
“Operational efficiency is a permanent and primary stake in all our activities. The implementation of SmartStream’s solution for fees and expense management is not only giving us strong capacity to industrialise a sensitive process, but also significant enhancement to quality controls for the benefit of our clients,” says Pierre Duret, head of clearing within BNP Paribas CIB derivatives execution and clearing, in a prepared statement.
SmartStream’s Bharat Malesha, executive vice president for fees and expense management, tells FTF News that he hopes that major industry players will move to a more standardized approach to fees management because invoicing for execution services doesn’t constitute a competitive advantage.
SmartStream Recs Product News
In addition to the Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas news, the vendor launched the latest release of its reconciliations solution, which is the third iteration of its TLM Reconciliations Premium solution, officials say.
The latest edition offers “flexible self-service user experience, comprehensive trend analysis for match rate optimization and exception reduction, and model choices for each reconciliation,” vendor officials say.
One of the latest release’s new features, TLM View, is a user-driven “approach to analytics, “with no reliance on IT support, allowing access to the full range of real-time and historical data in the reconciliation repository,” vendor officials say. This feature will help end-user firms identify “trends and exception patterns to further reduce manual intervention.” The TLM View also offers a single interface with dashboards that are “fully customizable.”
The latest release also features TLM SmartRecs, an onboarding and automated match rule creation solution that has data transformation functions and enhanced analysis of incoming data, officials say. “TLM SmartRecs allows business users to independently model new reconciliations or fine-tune existing reconciliations to improve outcomes,” according to SmartStream.
“With the latest release of TLM Reconciliations Premium we have the infrastructure to allow for robotic process automation (RPA) and have the ability to view distributed ledger information,” says Rocky Martinez, chief technology officer (CTO) for SmartStream, in a prepared statement. “This is what we view as the future as it becomes industry standard for our customers,” Martinez adds.
SmartStream also announced that TLM Reconciliations Premium now offers “a choice in how each reconciliation is persisted” via TLM Persist, which supports “alternatives that range from a supported relational database management system (RDBMS) to lighter storage options,” officials say. “Regardless of persistence choice, all reconciliations can be accessed through the same user interface.”
This release positions SmartStream so that clients will not need “multiple vendors to provide a range of services,” says Haytham Kaddoura, CEO, SmartStream, in a prepared statement.
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