In other FinTech news, LBBW extends its SmartStream partnership, Navy Federal works with Broadridge, RJO goes to Paris, and ENGIE’s energy traders use an Orchestrade solution.
World Bank Deployment to Cover Middle and Back Offices
SimCorp, which provides investment management products and services to the financial services industry, reports that the World Bank has licensed SimCorp Dimension, the vendor’s investment management system. The agreement was signed in late 2018, per SimCorp.
Under the agreement, the World Bank has licensed SimCorp’s “middle and back office solutions including asset management, collateral management, cash and securities management, investment accounting, reconciliation, performance management, settlement, risk, fund administration, data warehouse, IBOR, general ledger and corporate actions,” according to SimCorp officials.
The World Bank Group’s stated goals for the deployment include ending “extreme poverty” in the developing countries by 2030 and “fostering the income growth of the bottom 40% of the population, in the countries in which the Bank works.”
The World Bank, which was established in 1944, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and tallies 10,000 employees.
SimCorp officials point out that its “other banking clients include the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, the Central Bank of Thailand and Oesterreichische National bank in Austria.”
LBBW Extends Partnership with SmartStream
Post-trade vendor SmartStream Technologies reports that Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) has “extended its partnership with SmartStream to deploy new modules over the next five years” — to build a fully operational control center for its financial transactions business, officials say.
LBBW is a “long-standing customer,” SmartStream notes, and the additional new modules include a “securities module,” as well as elements that “address new regulatory requirements.”
LBBW will be able to continue to “reconcile transactions and reduce risk exposure; delivering greater control of the reconciliation process,” SmartStream says in its statement.
“The extension of SmartSteam’s proven solution will allow LBBW the ability to handle a vast number of transactions per day; the product will lower operational cost and risk, with minimum disruption to daily operations,” Haytham Kaddoura, SmartStream’s CEO, says in the statement.
LBBW is owned by the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, the Savings Bank Association of Baden-Württemberg and the City of Stuttgart.
Navy Federal Goes Live with Broadridge’s MBS SaaS platform
Navy Federal Credit Union officials report that the “largest retail credit union in the U.S. with over $97 billion in assets,” has gone live with the Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Expert SaaS platform of Broadridge Financial Solutions, a post-trade solutions provider.
The fixed income MBS Expert SaaS platform, a securities processing solution, provides “functional capabilities to support front, middle and back office operations,” according to Broadridge.
MBS Expert “integrates with a client’s existing electronic trading platform and front and back office infrastructure,” Broadridge officials say. The Broadridge platform is used by more than 30 firms including the largest Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) clearing members and asset managers.
“MBS Expert was the right choice to support our expanding business needs, and we have transacted over $2 billion worth of MBS trading leveraging MBS Expert,” said William Tabri, manager of capital markets at Navy Federal Credit Union, in a statement. “Navy Federal is now a full-clearing member of the FICC’s MBS Division, availing us of the entire range of MBS related services. Aside from leveraging the new relationships with other FICC member firms, we will benefit from decreased counterparty risk and a centralized margining process through the FICC,” Tabri says.
R.J. O’Brien to Open Paris Office
Chicago-based R.J. O’Brien & Associates (RJO), which counts itself as the “oldest and largest independent futures brokerage and clearing firm in the United States,” reports that it now has a new affiliate, R.J. O’Brien France S.A.S., which will open an office in Paris, after it receives regulatory approval.
The privately held company expects that approval “as soon as the end of March,” and notes that the new office “gives RJO its first foothold in mainland Europe and furthers its strategic global growth initiative, aimed at building on the company’s core offerings.”
Last year, the RJO Group, which consists of RJO and its affiliates, opened its first office in Dubai and moved into new office space in London, the firm says in its statement, which also points out that the group maintains offices in Chicago, New York, London, Paris and Dubai, as well as in Hong Kong, Beijing and Seoul.
RJO also reports that it clears “more than 80,000 client accounts.”
ENGIE Deploys Orchestrade Solution for Key Businesses
Orchestrade Financial Systems, a cross-asset trading, risk management and operations technology vendor, reports that ENGIE Global Markets, the energy trading group of ENGIE, a gas, power and energy services provider, is using an Orchestrade solution to manage its front-end deal management system for its financial and commodities businesses such as physical gas, power and derivatives.
The Orchestrade offering will provide trade capture, real-time P&L, risk management (desktop and enterprise), and straight through processing (STP) via “a single consistent platform with all required market connectivity,” Orchestrade officials say. The solution will be deployed across sales, trading, risk, operations and reporting groups at ENGIE Global Markets, a regulated Investment Services Provider that serves all ENGIE global activities.
“With Orchestrade, we are embracing a disruptive technology that can keep pace with our innovative approach to delivering value to customers. Today, we are able to rapidly launch new products including the most complex energy derivatives and improve our end-to-end processing and risk management,” says Philippe Vedrenne, CEO of ENGIE Global Markets, in a prepared statement.
The Orchestrade platform is in production at ENGIE’s Paris, Singapore and Brussels sites, officials say.
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