SmartStream - Press Releases

F&C selects TLM Trade Process Management to create a single transaction processing environment

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:32:19 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that leading UK asset management firm F&C has selectedTLM® Trade Process Management, to deliver a single integrated system across its middle and back office.

F&C, with approximately £100 billion under management, serves a wide range of institutional and private clients. The firm wanted to replace its existing environment of two securities processing systems with a single operational model and infrastructure that could scale to meet future business demand globally.

As a result, F&C selected SmartStream’s TLM Trade Process Management to deliver a single platform capable of processing equities, derivatives, FX and MM transactions in a consistent and coordinated manner. The TLM solution will manage the trade from point of execution through to confirmations via the Omgeo CTM matching utility. To reduce operational risk and cost and to ensure F&C meets internal and customer SLAs and market deadlines, TLM Trade Process Management will deliver cross-asset, pre-emptive exception management and alerting.

The SmartStream solution also provides a flexible platform for future development due to an agile design that enables processes to be easily adapted and extended to cover new transaction types such listed futures and OTC derivatives.

Luc Leclerq, Head of Operations, IT and Projects at F&C, commented: “With TLM Trade Process Management we now have a window into our middle and back office activity, supporting our drive for greater post-trade efficiency. By replacing legacy systems we can optimise our post trading platform, reduce operational costs and improve risk management.”

Richard Cummings, EVP at SmartStream Technologies, stated: “The middle and back performs a critical control function, however many are under utilised due to a mixture of legacy systems and manual processes that also introduce unnecessary risk and cost. Using TLM Trade Process Management to replace a variety of systems and processes, F&C will have a single, scalable processing platform that delivers enhanced visibility and control to its post-trade operations.”

SmartStream's North American growth continues with Toronto office opening and New York expansion

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:33:43 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced further investment across North America as it continues to win new clients in the region.

SmartStream’s North American operations have experienced significant growth over recent years with leading US investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers becoming clients. This latest investment reflects both the company’s focus on serving the newly expanded customer base and recognition of the region’s continued growth prospects.

A new Canadian operation, run out of Toronto, will be headed by Kurt Eldridge who until recently was sales manager for SmartStream’s operations in Australia and New Zealand. In that role, Kurt helped to expand SmartStream’s business in the region working with some of its largest institutions to win new business and manage the successful deployment of the company’s TLM solutions.

SmartStream’s existing New York office is also expanding with the appointment of Bill Blythe, who is moving from the company’s UK operations to oversee sales for North America. Bill brings a wealth of experience having been instrumental in SmartStream’s continued success in the UK, signing major clients to a variety of solutions including TLM Cash Management, TLM Reconciliations and TLM Corporate Actions.

Commenting on the organisational changes and investment, Philippe Chambadal CEO, SmartStream, said: “These latest changes reflect the significant amount of new business SmartStream has transacted in North America over the last 18 months. Both Kurt and Bill are highly successful sales professionals who have achieved significant results, signing some of the biggest clients to a range of TLM solutions. They have strong track records and a proven ability to partner with some of the largest and most exacting clients. With Kurt and Bill now in place I’m convinced our North American business will continue its success and deliver even greater growth over the coming years.”

German financial services firm apobank selects TLM Corona to reduce operational risk through standardised processing

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:50:48 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced Germany’s Deutsche Apotheker und Ärztebank (apoBank) has selected TLM Corona to create a set of standardised transaction processes.

As Germany’s largest cooperative bank, apoBank serves individuals and organisations involved in social welfare occupations, including pharmacists, physicians, dentists and veterinary surgeons. Its focus on client service and efficiency has enabled it to grow significantly and today apoBank has more than 330,000 customers and assets of approximately €41 billion.

apoBank examined the market to find a solution that could support compliance with audit requirements, reduce risk and introduce standardised transaction processing across its back office operations. After investigating its options, the bank selected SmartStream’s TLM Corona for Cash, Securities and Investigations.

The TLM Corona solution will be used for daily and monthly internal reconciliations between apoBank’s core banking and fund accounting systems, as well as reconciliations between internal and external accounts.

Axel Schneider, Area Manager, Operations at apoBank, said: “apoBank is continually looking for ways to embed processes and controls that deliver greater efficiency to the business. We required a solution that was capable of automating critical transaction processes, ensuring greater visibility on both a daily and monthly basis. The TLM Corona solution matched those requirements, delivering a high level of automation and in a standardised manner through a single solution. This should enable us to create more efficient operations and continue to deliver the best possible service to our unique range of customers.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, added: “We are delighted that apoBank has chosen TLM Corona to create standardised processes for its cash and securities transactions. Its decision shows TLM Corona’s competitiveness in providing a strategic and flexible solution that will allow the institution to reduce costs and operational risks.”

New SmartStream research reveals trends and priorities for corporate actions automation projects

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:50:34 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the release of new research, entitled “The Never-ending Story? Progress in the Automation of Corporate Actions”.

Based on in-depth interviews with senior executives in the UK and United States conducted by A-Team Group, the report reveals where progress has been made to date and what is left to do in order to create more efficient event management. According to the report, lowering operational costs has been superseded by risk reduction as the critical driver for automation projects and this has accelerated since the financial crisis.

Existing problems with manual steps in the corporate actions process have been exacerbated in the last two years due to volume growth and increased complexity. This has placed increased pressure on back offices already struggling with event processing and the rising costs associated with having to hire staff to cope with volume demand.

Although progress has been made in the automation of the simpler and more standardised event processes such as data capture and reconciliation, the report also revealed where significant challenges remain. Custodians, prime brokers, asset managers and banks in both the United States and the UK highlighted issuer announcements, election responses and proxy voting as the areas causing processing issues. The research also suggests that automation projects at these firms will now start to focus on areas including entitlement confirmations, instructions processing and client communications.

Paul Phillips, Senior Business Development Consultant at SmartStream, said: “In the current climate where firms are examining every operational aspect to understand where their biggest risks lie, it’s no surprise that the manually intensive world of corporate actions processing is now gaining attention at the board level of these institutions. The inherent problems in corporate actions processing are well documented but it’s clear from this research that the pace of change is causing major issues at firms of all sizes globally. Greater automation cannot be achieved in isolation, it depends heavily on developments in infrastructure, standards and technology, and our survey participants were vociferous in their demands that the industry and vendors work together to progress this. A great example of this is the recent draft ISO20022 announcement messages by the DTCC and SWIFT for the US, extending the use of standardised messaging to that market where take up has traditionally been slower than Europe or Asia. However, as the report shows outside of the US the highly fragmented market infrastructure creates significant operational challenges to firms that are unlikely to be overcome in the short term.”

The report can be dowloaded here

Financial services firms able to significantly improve trade lifecycle management with SmartStream and Misys partnership

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:50:34 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced a partnership with global application software and services company Misys that will deliver a range of post trade transaction processing solutions.

The global partnership brings together two leading software providers to deliver end-to-end solutions that provide broad connectivity to market participants and exchanges, improves processing efficiencies and reduces risk throughout the transaction lifecycle. SmartStream’s market-leading reconciliation software will be embedded into Misys Summit FT and Opics Plus to provide additional transaction matching, exceptions and investigations management to Misys’ award-winning solutions.

Misys Summit’s and Opics Plus’ broad cross-asset coverage including OTC derivatives, fixed income, FX, Equity and structured products, will be enhanced further with capabilities from SmartStream’s TLM Trade Process Management software. Additionally, customers using Misys Opics Plus will benefit from the cash management and nostro reconciliations improvements resulting from the partnership.

Larry Mitchell, VP Solutions Management, Treasury & Capital Markets at Misys, adds: “This is a really exciting step that brings true value to our customers. We pride ourselves in continuously improving our overall offering to our clients so that they can manage the complexity of today’s financial markets. This partnership brings two complementary sets of solutions together to enable financial institutions to grow through innovation, improve management of liquidity and reduce costs through operational risk control and streamlined processes.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO, SmartStream Technologies, comments: “As a market leader in transaction processing management, we understand the post-trade matching, exception management and investigations needs of institutions regardless of size, processes, or lines of business. The combination of our knowledge and Misys’ deep expertise in treasury and capital markets processing delivers a joined up solution that significantly adds value to both our business propositions. Crucially this partnership removes many of the integration elements for joint SmartStream and Misys clients that would previously been managed by in-house teams, enabling firms to reduce implementation costs and timescales, and delivering a faster time to market.”

The partnership extends Misys Summit’s reach further into the exchange traded arena with SmartStream components for reconciliation, exceptions handling, corporate actions coverage and links to industry third parties. It will also add significant value to Summit Invest, the Misys cross-asset buy-side solution, offering reconciliations capability, along with integration to market-leading services such as Omgeo and links to custodians and prime brokers.

As a result, the fully automated solutions from SmartStream and Misys brings greater visibility into the reconciliations and exceptions management area for clients, a more cost-effective operation with reduced risk and ultimately a higher return on investment through end-to-end exceptions-based transaction lifecycle processing of trades.

Users of the Misys Summit ASP solution will also benefit from the SmartStream partnership, enabling smaller market players and buy-side organisations to access the combined market-leading solutions, with the added flexibility, time to market and a lower total cost of ownership delivered by a hosted version.

SmartStream named Best Corporate Actions Vendor for third year running by readers of Inside Reference Data

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:50:34 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has been named Best Corporate Actions vendor at the 2010 Inside Reference Data/Inside Market Data awards.

The awards, now in their eighth year, recognise industry excellence within the market data, reference data and enterprise data management sectors. This is the third year in succession that SmartStream has won the Corporate Actions vendor award.

Candidates were selected by the editorial staff at Inside Market Data and Inside Reference Data with the winners chosen by their readership, representing operations professionals at investment banks, securities firms, institutional investors, brokers and exchanges. These industry experts selected SmartStream as Inside Reference Data’s Best Corporate Actions Vendor from a shortlist including Fiserv, Information Mosaic and XSP.

“We introduced the best corporate actions vendor category three year’s ago as the automation of corporate actions processing was being pushed up the agenda. Our readers have voted for SmartStream as the best corporate actions vendor each year, recognising the company for its continued ability to efficiently automate corporate actions processing,” said Tine Thoresen, Editor of Inside Reference Data.

Paul Phillips Senior Business Development Consultant at SmartStream, commented: “With growing volumes and the increased complexity of notifications, the automation of event processing remains critical and has increased in importance. It’s therefore gratifying that industry practitioners voted for us to win this award for a third year in a row. Our continued success with TLM Corporate Actions, alongside this award, demonstrates the market’s appetite for driving risk from their operations and TLM’s ability to deliver greater automation to what is still a highly manual and costly operational area."

SmartStream launches DClear Utilities to lower the cost-per-trade through shared data and trade processing services

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:23:11 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the launch of DClear Utilities, a new division providing shared data and trade processing utilities for the financial services community.

DClear will deliver centralised processing of financial instruments across their entire lifecycle through an on demand style platform, enabling clients to benefit from a shared service centre model for common processing services. By consolidating functions such as confirmations matching, order/trade matching and position management into a single entity, DClear’s Utilities will deliver greater transaction visibility, lowering operational risk and reducing the cost-per-trade.

The DClear Reference Data Management Utility is the first such utility to be launched and has already signed its first customer, based in the United States. It will aggregate, reconcile and monitor the agreed aspects of clients’ reference data at an individual data field level, providing integration and cleansing of data sources, with rules-based processing providing integrity checks on all incoming data. As a result the utility will ensure fewer trade breaks by providing clean and consistent data, integrated across all assets, entities and instructions.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, commented: “In the current financial market of decreasing margins and volume volatility, the need to reduce transaction costs through more efficient back office processes that reduce trade breaks and increase risk controls has become even more urgent. We see that pressure is driving the trend towards the standardisation of systems and processes that offer no strategic differentiation yet consume vast amounts of time, effort and money. The DClear model based around the shared, standardised delivery of commoditised functions for back office processing and a centralised repository of standardised data delivers significant risk mitigation and reduces operational cost. DClear’s industry Utilities can create a network effect by demonstrating to all market participants that using the same reference data and reconciliation and exception management processes will significantly reduce risk and cost. By taking a co-operative approach among market participants to solve a common problem these Utilities deliver the economies of scale that benefit all participants, initially for reference data and then for more generic back office processing.”

SmartStream TLM Corporate Actions selected for global roll out by top US Bank

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:22:47 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that one of the world’s largest banking institutions has selected TLM Corporate Actions to create a global utility for corporate actions processing.

The leading US-based bank, an existing SmartStream TLM customer, will use TLM Corporate Actions for its Global Wealth Management and Institutional Business units. At the same time the firm is expanding its use of TLM Reconciliations to replace existing solutions at the bank. This will enable it to gain operational efficiencies by centralising its transaction processing across business units and benefiting from technology and process consolidation.

SmartStream’s Business Process Management (BPM) solution, TLM Control, will be used for integrating messaging and communication from external systems and databases into TLM Reconciliations and TLM Corporate Actions.

Lou Longhi, Managing Director - Americas, SmartStream Technologies, commented: “We’re delighted that one of the biggest banks in the US has chosen to centralise its processing on TLM. This deal highlights the close relationship we have built with this customer, listening to their business needs and objectives. We understood the issues they were facing and were likely to encounter over the next five years and demonstrated we had the solution to match those criteria. I look forward to working with them and continuing to build on the excellent relationship we’ve established.”

Internet payments provider Ivobank goes live on TLM Reconciliations

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:22:20 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Ivobank, a new UK-regulated internet bank, has gone live on TLM Reconciliations.

Ivobank is a new online bank, based in London, specialising in payments and money transfer services for businesses and customers. Ivobank represents an alternative to the current payment providers and combines the simple, fast and cost effective service of an online payments company with all the benefits, peace of mind, security and privacy of a UK-licensed bank.

In order to launch, the bank needed a solution to reconcile cash entries on its General Ledger against the settlement bank account and the corresponding payment agent. Ivobank chose TLM Reconciliations to ensure it had sufficient flexibility and scalability to grow as the business transacted new currencies and volumes increased.

Alex Daly, Finance Director, Ivobank, said: “We recognised that efficient reconciliation processes would be critical to delivering an effective and customer-centric operation. The decision to choose TLM was simple as we knew we would get proven, best-of-breed technology that would meet our plans for the bank. TLM delivers a robust design and provides us with exactly what we needed today, with the peace of mind to know our operations can scale with our ambitions.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO at SmartStream, commented: “I’m delighted Ivobank selected SmartStream to create a reconciliations platform using TLM Reconciliations and has since successfully gone live. Standing out in the highly competitive retail banking market requires offering something different and giving customers the best possible service. Choosing the market-leading reconciliations software means Ivobank can deliver the scalability required to keep pace with their volume growth. I look forward to working with them as Ivobank continues their successful roll out across new geographies and offers new services to customers.”

Top 10 Global bank goes live on TLM for Treasury Confirmations

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:22:08 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that one of the world’s largest banks has gone live on TLM® Treasury Confirmations.

The bank took the opportunity to examine critical back office processes and performance as part of a strategic review. This identified the need for a single, scalable platform to meet future volume projections and process multiple instrument types including cash, Foreign Exchange (FX) and Money Markets (MM).

Philippe Chambadal, CEO at SmartStream, said: “We are delighted that this leading bank has selected TLM Treasury Confirmations to deliver an enterprise-wide confirmation platform. Like many firms they have experienced rapid growth in FX, MM and OTC volumes and found their existing systems no longer provided the capacity to effectively process either the current or projected volumes. TLM Treasury Confirmations provides a truly scalable platform and is already handling 60,000 daily trades and processing around 150,000 messages per hour. We look forward to working with them as they migrate further volume and instruments on to the TLM platform.”

DClear Utilities launches Data Dictionary Utility

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:58:16 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the availability of the DClear Data Dictionary, a new utility providing a structured information portal for all exchange and data provider documentation.

The Data Dictionary is part of the DClear Reference Data Utility, available as a standalone solution for firms looking to standardise, quantify and accelerate the translation of documentation. It simplifies the process of integrating new data providers and feeds into the client’s environment and improves data quality by reviewing, researching and verifying vendor feed documentation to ensure complete accuracy.

As a result, the DClear Data Dictionary eases the pain of intricate documentation analysis by organising the information in logical categories, and making them viewable through a web interface. It also enables firms to lower costs by removing the need for dedicated in house teams that update and refine the data definitions.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream, commented: “The cost of building and maintaining a data dictionary internally requires a substantial investment in resources, both in terms of capital and time. It also creates a significant operational overhead due to the ongoing upkeep required to collate, verify and maintain the data definitions. DClear’s utility approach removes this cost and uncertainty around staffing by ensuring definition information is always available, with clients only paying when they need to use the information. As a result, firms not only receive better quality data and achieve their global coverage requirements but do so at a fraction of the cost compared to managing it internally.”

SmartStream and ByAllAccounts partner to deliver turnkey account aggregation and reconciliation solution

Tue, 25 May 2010 14:44:09 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, and ByAllAccounts, the investment manager’s choice for account aggregation, today announced a partnership that will deliver aggregated, reconciliation-ready data within the TLM Reconciliations and TLM OnDemand solutions.

ByAllAccounts is a recognised leader in account aggregation to buy-side firms, with more than $170 billion in assets flowing through its aggregation engine daily. Traditional solutions for aggregating data for reconciliation are time consuming and costly, requiring significant and ongoing investment in people and infrastructure. ByAllAccounts’ patented technology delivers standardised data from thousands of sources and bridges the gap between the online account information available to investment managers and the accurate, consolidated, reconciliation-ready data they need.

Dayle Scher, Research Director, Securities & Investments at TowerGroup, commented: “Mid tier and smaller buy-side firms struggle with improving efficiency in reconciliation operations due to the number of external sources housing portfolio and account data. Improvements in data aggregation can drive down costs as well as support operational controls provided by reconciliation applications.”

The partnership will deliver a turnkey data and reconciliation solution to help buy-side firms, custodians, wealth managers and private banks build stronger operational controls in a more cost effective manner. The combined, ready-to-use solution will be available through TLM OnDemand, SmartStream’s Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, providing a lower Total Cost of Ownership and rapid deployment to buy-side firms. For those firms with on premise reconciliations, ByAllAccounts will also be available as an integrated service within SmartStream’s TLM Reconciliations solution.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO, SmartStream Technologies, said: “This is a significant announcement for SmartStream, our clients, and the market in general. The old approach of manual processes and multiple feeds into reconciliation solutions acts as a significant barrier to transaction processing automation, increasing both operational risk and cost. In today’s market and regulatory conditions, asset managers, wealth management firms, private banks and hedge funds are looking for a combined data and reconciliation solution to help them build strong operational controls and do so in a more cost effective manner. That is precisely what the ByAllAccounts and SmartStream partnership provides, combining two leaders in their respective fields to offer a single solution that drives down transaction processing costs and delivers new levels of operational efficiency.”

James Carney, president and CEO of ByAllAccounts, commented: “A recent survey by Thompson Reuters and Lepus Research revealed that 77 percent of participants from buy-side and sell-side firms intend to increase spending on projects that address data quality and consistency issues. Our joint solution gives investment managers a proven way to address those issues today, positioning our offering - and the firms who use it - for immediate success in this market.”

LCL selects TLM Corona to deliver more efficient cash and Nostro reconciliations

Wed, 05 May 2010 11:13:35 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that leading French bank LCL has selected TLM Corona to deliver a single solution for its cash and Nostro reconciliations.

LCL will use a local language version of SmartStream’s TLM Corona to manage its Nostro payments and cash reconciliations across its 30 back offices located throughout France. Replacing an older SmartStream reconciliation solution, TLM Corona will be used to automate the bank’s reconciliations processes, creating a single platform to deliver more efficient and cost effective transaction processing.

TLM Corona highlights exceptions for investigation to users and will provide the bank with a complete audit trail of its transactions for compliance purposes. The solution’s web-based user interface, TLM WebConnect, will enable the bank to quickly and easily view all reconciliations across its French back offices.

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President, SmartStream Technologies said: “We’re delighted that such a significant banking force in the region, has selected TLM Corona. As an existing SmartStream client, LCL knew the company’s reconciliations expertise and were confident that the latest TLM Corona solution offered the performance and reliability it require to manage a critical business function. TLM Corona has a strong reputation in the market and as a result is the world’s most heavily deployed reconciliation system. LCL is a valued, long-term SmartStream client and its selection of TLM Corona will extend and strengthen that relationship. I look forward to working with them through this project and beyond.”

Intelligent Managed Services selects TLM Reconciliations for hosted bank infrastructure solution

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:36:04 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Intelligent Managed Services (IMS) has selected TLM Reconciliations to manage transactions within its new hosted bank infrastructure solution.

IMS offers a range of hosted retail banking solutions that are ideal for both new entrants to financial services or existing firms. Originally run as Ivobank, the firm’s underlying banking platform was FSA regulated and successfully operated in a number of European markets. It is from this proven platform that IMS can offer either a complete hosted banking solution or a single processing element, such as internet banking, that ensures a faster time to market for these new services. IMS can also offer current accounts, instant access savings, cash ISA’s, term deposits, unsecured lending and child trust funds through its unique end-to-end solution.

TLM Reconciliations will be used to manage transaction processing throughout the IMS service. The SmartStream solution was selected by IMS due to its ability to deliver high automated match rates across a range of reconciliation types, as well as the flexibility and scalability to manage higher volumes in line with client growth projections.

Alex Daly, Managing Director at IMS, commented: “Our approach is to provide a unique portfolio of Software as a Service (SaaS) banking solutions that significantly reduce our clients’ time to market, capital costs and internal resource. We know from experience that efficient reconciliation processes would be critical to delivering an effective and truly client-centric operation. TLM delivers a robust design and provides us with exactly what we needed today, with the peace of mind to know our operations can scale in line with our clients ambitions.”

Richard Cummings, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, added: “I’m delighted IMS has selected SmartStream to create a reconciliations platform using TLM Reconciliations. Choosing the market-leading reconciliations software means IMS can deliver both the capacity and flexibility to meet their clients predicted volume growth and evolving business processing requirements.”

Oberbank integrates domestic guarantee and cross-border business with SmartStream TLM Trade Finance

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:50:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Austrian-based financial services group Oberbank has selected TLM Trade Finance to create a single platform for its cross-border and domestic business.

Oberbank is a highly successful financial services firm operating across Central and Eastern Europe managing approximately €18 billion for clients through a range of retail and wholesale products. As a highly experienced bank in trade finance, Oberbank wanted to ensure its operations could continue to offer a wide range of products and deliver value for money to its clients.

After analysing a range of trade finance solutions, Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to further automate its Guarantees, Letters of Credit and Collections business processes. The solution will be installed at Oberbank’s headquarters in Linz, Austria and will initially process domestic guarantees, followed by its Austrian trade finance business and later on its branches in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary.

Hubert Umlauf, General Manager, Organisational Development & Process Management at Oberbank, commented: “Finding a solution that could automate our paper-based processes for domestic guarantees and integrating it in the whole range of our trade finance business was critical as we look to continue our success. The SmartStream TLM solution clearly met our requirements with its ability to automate many of the processes and our staff found it easy to use. With TLM Trade Finance as a single, centralised solution for our domestic guarantee and cross-border trade finance business we believe that our business will be more efficient. With automated workflows and improved reporting capabilities we can spend more time talking to customers and providing the best possible service.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, said: “We’re delighted that as part of their organisational review Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to manage its domestic and cross-border business. This will enable them to replace paper forms and data re-entry with workflow-based processes, electronic forms and documentation. As a result, Oberbank will lower their operational costs and risk, while supporting their ultimate goal; to further enhance reporting and client service to maintain a competitive advantage.”

Helaba selects TLM Trade Finance to create a scalable platform to manage future growth

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:30:15 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that German financial services firm Helaba Group has selected TLM Trade Finance to automate its letters of credit and guarantees business processes.

Frankfurt-based Helaba is one of Germany’s leading Landesbanks, with total assets of €185 billion and serving approximately five million customers. The bank operates as a centralised organisation, supplying a range of products and services to savings and commercial banks across the Hesse and Thuringia regions.

Helaba’s existing trade finance system had been in use since 1990 and could no longer scale sufficiently to handle growing volumes and didn’t offer the flexibility required to manage increasing complex business processes. As a result, it examined the market for a new trade finance platform that would ensure it remained agile to the changing requirements of the banks it served. Helaba selected TLM Trade Finance and will install the solution at its data processing centre in Offenbach.

Jörg Hartmann, Senior Vice President, Head of Structured Trade & Commodity Finance at Helaba Group, commented: “As our clients’ needs evolved the technical limitations of our existing system became clear. It was evident that the SmartStream TLM Trade Finance solution was a good fit for our organisation and provided us with the ideal platform for processing our client banks’ letters of credit and collections, as well as our guarantee business. It also offers the potential for expansion to meet future processing needs and technical challenges. This will ensure that Helaba continues to provide our business partners with the best quality services.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President, at SmartStream Technologies, added: “Helaba is a sophisticated firm that offers a wide range of services through its bank partner network and as a result required a modern platform to meet its trade finance processing needs. TLM Trade Finance is a robust and proven solution for automating Letters of Credit, Guarantees and collections documentation, enabling firms, such as Helaba, to focus on client service needs. I’m delighted they have selected SmartStream to manage their trade finance processing and l look forward to working with them as the Helaba Group implements the solution across its business.”

TLM Corporate Actions praised for innovation in BISS Research Benchmarking Report

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:35:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that TLM Corporate Actions has attained accreditation in the 2009 B.I.S.S. Research Corporate Actions Systems benchmarking evaluation.

The benchmark tests organised by B.I.S.S. Research and set by an industry panel highlighted SmartStream’s innovative approach to event processing and its integration with the wider TLM solutions that set it apart from the competition. It also praised TLM Corporate Actions ability to automate much of the corporate actions process through proactive monitoring and predictive technology.

The independent panel noted that TLM Corporate Actions can significantly reduce operational risk in the corporate actions department and increase service levels to the end investor to enable regulatory compliance.

Gary Wright, C.E.O., B.I.S.S. Research and creator of the B.I.S.S. business benchmarking concept, said: “SmartStream has gained a valuable nod of approval from our independent industry panel for its new TLM Corporate Actions solution. It is crucial that investment in new system developments is proved to be worthwhile and financially rewarding and the B.I.S.S. 2009 Corporate Actions benchmarking shows SmartStream has been very clever and mindful of changes in the securities markets and should succeed. TLM Corporate Actions offers the market a clear differential to other corporate actions products and genuine choice for financial services firms. It is always an objective of the B.I.S.S. benchmarking to find the real differences between systems and provide buyers with an independent analysis of what they are and in TLM Corporate Actions we have found and highlighted a system with a very different approach to solving the problems in corporate actions operations.”

Paul Phillips, Senior Business Development Consultant at SmartStream Technologies, said: “The 2009 B.I.S.S. accreditation reflects the significant amount of hard work and creativity invested by SmartStream to develop a new solution that offers the functionality required to meet today’s event processing challenges. We are seeing high levels of interest from firms globally who are still struggling with processing inefficiencies and legacy systems that are creaking under the increased pressure of client, market and regulatory demands. As a standalone solution TLM Corporate Actions is proving to be one of the most functionally rich corporate actions solutions available today. It also offers integration with our broader suite of TLM solutions that we believe offers unparalleled ability to create more proactive middle and back office operations, reducing operational risk and lowering costs.”

SmartStream wins Leader in Innovation award for Exception Management and Investigations

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:57:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Financial-i, a UK-based magazine focusing on strategy and technology for the buy-side, has selected SmartStream as the winner of its Leader in Innovation for Exception Management and Investigations.

The awards were selected by an independent advisory panel composed of industry analysts from the leading research houses – Aite, Celent, Chartis Research, TowerGroup – as well as representatives from consulting firms and independent consultants.

Anita Hawser, Editor of Financial-i, commented: “Our Leaders in Innovation Awards identify global transaction banks and financial hardware and software vendors that in the last 12 months have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to innovation.”

According to the advisory panel: "Post-crisis, now more than ever before, firms are looking for business solutions that provide a much quicker return on investment and do what they actually say on the tin. In selecting winners in each category we have tried to focus on those companies we and our advisory panel believe have that little something extra that makes their solutions stand out from their competitors in terms of depth and breadth of functionality, ease of implementation and support and solutions that are not looking for a problem to solve but actually address real business needs."

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, said: “SmartStream is the recognised market leader in post trade processing solutions. We offer these capabilities through a number of deployment options, including SaaS, on premise and full BPO. Each one is based on the same core technology and enables firms of all sizes to reduce the cost of their transaction processing, lower their risk and create new levels of middle and back office efficiency. SmartStream has continued to invest heavily in each of these areas, and it is therefore gratifying that the independent panel of highly respected industry analysts have judged our TLM technology to be the innovation leader.”

SmartStream named best reconciliations vendor in Europe by Waters Magazine

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:47:22 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has been named as the Best Reconciliations Vendor by Waters in its first European Financial Information Technology (EuroFIT) Awards.

The awards set out to recognise the best financial IT products and services for European investment firms. Chosen by the editors of Waters with help from sibling publication Dealing with Technology, the winners won based on the maturity of their offerings, leadership in their respective fields and their strength moving forward in a challenging landscape.

Phil Albinus, Editor of Waters, said: “With the EuroFITs, Waters wanted to honour the innovative solutions that have served European investment firms so well. These awards shine an overdue spotlight on the tools and services that will help Europe emerge from the recession’s vice-like grip. SmartStream is seen as the leader in reconciliation and exception management solutions and this award follows on from its success earlier in the year in the Waters Rankings that were selected by our readership.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, commented: “SmartStream is the leading reconciliations solution provider and has continued to invest in the underlying TLM technology with two major launches this year. Firstly, the SWIFT partnership around our SaaS-based offering, TLM OnDemand, which enables firms to access the industry leading solution with no upfront licence costs and re-use their existing SWIFT infrastructure to lower risk and cost. Secondly, at SIBOS, we announced TLM Reconciliations-Premium that delivers massively scalable transaction processing with the flexibility to quickly optimise the solution to meet each individual client’s specific transaction processing needs. Our continued reconciliations success with TLM, whether powering an internal utility, as part of a BPO service or through a cost-effective SaaS approach, is testament to its ability to drive down the cost-per-transaction and deliver a significant return on investment.”

SmartStream appoints Asia Business Connections as a partner in Indonesia

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:39:05 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has appointed Asia Business Connections (ABC) as a Strategy and Consulting partner for SmartStream’s full range of TLM solutions in Indonesia.

ABC is a Singapore based company that acts in an advisory capacity to financial institutions in the Asia Pacific region. It offers expertise in specific fields such as treasury, governance, risk management, payments, wholesale banking, wealth management and compliance. ABC works with SmartStream across the Asia Pacific region to help identify potential clients across the region and to promote SmartStream’s solutions for the middle and back office.

Alan Talbot, Director at ABC, said: “ABC’s mission is to bring innovative and proven software solutions to the Asia Pacific financial services sector including Indonesia. SmartStream is recognised as a leader in delivering financial technology solutions and we believe that the TLM solution suite can add value to our clients by helping them to deliver more efficient and cost-effective operations. We look forward to combining the strength of SmartStream’s solutions with our market knowledge and therefore being able to help organisations across the region to introduce greater levels of automation and control.”

Alastair McGill, Business Development and Alliances Director, SmartStream Technologies, said: “I’m delighted to extend Asia Business Connections involvement in the SmartStream Partner Program, which further strengthens SmartStream’s capabilities in the region. Throughout Asia, organisations are going through a period of unprecedented change and each faces its own unique challenges. Partnering with ABC offers SmartStream access to an extensive network of contacts, unparalleled experience and market intelligence. I look forward to working with them to offer SmartStream’s market-leading solutions to firms in Indonesia to meet institutions’ transaction processing needs.”

TLM Trade Process Management wins 2009 Banking Technology Readers Choice award

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01:17 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that its TLM Trade Process Management solution has won in the "Readers Choice” category at the 2009 Banking Technology Awards.

The awards, now in their tenth year, were chosen by Banking Technology's readership of more than 11,000 subscribers. TLM Trade Process Management was selected due to its success at a number of leading European firms where it has delivered a unified operations platform that monitors and controls instruments across their lifecycle. TLM Trade Process Management has consolidated fragmented and siloed infrastructures at these firms, ensuring more cost-effective operations by retiring multiple legacy systems and paper-based processes across equities, fixed income and derivatives.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, commented: “This latest award, as voted for by readers of one of the industry’s leading titles, highlights the significant benefits that SmartStream’s TLM solutions can deliver. TLM Trade Process Management reduces operational risk through an automated, workflow-based approach to monitoring trade activity from deal capture to allocation, confirmation and settlement. This proactive approach helps to lower the cost-per-transaction while providing greater operational flexibility and scalability to respond to market and client demands across the range of instrument types.”

The United Bank selects TLM Corona as reconciliations platform

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:07:38 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Egyptian firm The United Bank has selected TLM Corona to automate its back office processes.

The United Bank was formed in June 2006 as a state-owned entity during financial reforms in Egypt and has since acquired three banks; the United Bank of Egypt, the Islamic International Bank for Investment and Development, and the Nile Bank. The bank had been reconciling transactions manually but recognised the need to reduce its operational risk and costs through automation. Further, with its transaction volumes continuing to rise, the bank required a single solution that would scale to meet its future processing needs.

After completing a solution analysis, The United Bank selected TLM Corona, through SmartStream’s local partner Intercom, to reconcile its cash, ATM and credit card transactions. A decisive factor in selecting TLM Corona was its ability to provide reconciliations across multiple transaction types within a single solution.

Mr. Mohamed Mostafa, Chief Information Officer at The United Bank, commented: “TLM Corona will provide us with a single reconciliations and investigations platform, automating the processing of all cash, ATM and credit card transactions to reduce our operational risk that was present in a manual environment. Automation will also significantly reduce the cost of processing these transactions while helping to deliver enhanced customer service.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, said: “We’re delighted that The United Bank has chosen TLM Corona to create an enterprise-wide reconciliations platform. Its decision shows TLM Corona’s strengths in providing a strategic and flexible solution that will allow the institution to reduce costs and operational risks while also providing the scalability to manage its predicted volume growth.”

SmartStream launches TLM Corporate Actions, delivering new levels of efficiency across the event management lifecycle

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:18:20 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the next generation of its market leading TLM Corporate Actions solution.

TLM Corporate Actions transforms corporate actions processing by effectively managing and presenting milestones, tasks and exceptions against events in real time through a diary-based view. This proactive, exception-driven approach ensures that appropriate actions are always presented and escalated as necessary to deliver superior levels of risk mitigation and control.

The solution significantly improves processing efficiency by delivering automation across the event lifecycle; from event cleansing, position reconciliation, communications, through to elections and entitlements. This enables firms to deliver outstanding customer service to both internal and external clients through the provision of more accurate, complete and timelier event information.

To help firms manage rising event volumes, TLM Corporate Actions is a highly scalable solution that consolidates information from various industry sources to deliver a single enterprise service covering multiple markets and instrument types. Its configurable workflow model provides a flexible solution that can be efficiently tailored to satisfy the specific processing requirements of any organisation.

TLM Corporate Actions new browser-based interface improves the user experience, presenting the widest range of corporate action information on a single screen. Its thin client delivery also ensures a rapid roll out across an organisation, to reduce the cost of ownership.

Cyrus Daruwala, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Financial Insights, commented: “In our experience firms globally struggle with highly manual corporate actions processes that, in the current market conditions, create unnecessary risk and cost, and directly impacts customer service. It’s unnecessary because solutions such as SmartStream’s TLM Corporate Actions can easily automate much of the corporate actions event lifecycle and efficiently manage event volumes as they continue to rise. The advantage of this approach is that it eliminates the possibility of single points of processing failure, thereby increasing an institution’s operational risk control, whilst delivering complete and accurate event processing.”

Alan Jones, Senior Product Manager at SmartStream Technologies, said: “TLM Corporate Actions is a highly successful and award winning solution that has delivered significant cost and risk reduction for many firms globally. We have used the experiences gained with those projects to design a new solution that delivers improved levels of scalability and flexibility to meet the event processing needs of every financial institution. The level of automation it delivers to what is still a highly manual back office process ensures firms will gain a significant return on their investment. Its full thin client delivery and innovative user interface enables firms to gain greater visibility into their event processing, identifying exceptions, providing steps to repair them and as a result reducing their exposure to risk and financial losses. This proactive, real-time approach to corporate actions supports firms to further improve their customer service and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.”

SmartStream expands Asia Pacific operations with new office in Tokyo

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:35:37 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has expanded its global operations with a new office in Tokyo.

SmartStream has established a client base of both regional banks and mega-banks through its local distribution partners, who to date have focused on selling and supporting the company’s market leading reconciliations solutions. The launch of a direct presence in the market signals SmartStream’s intent to expand the range of its middle and back office solutions available to the Japanese market both through a direct sales operation and through a broader array of channel partners.

The new operation will be led by Eiichi Matsumoto who joins SmartStream as Country Manager for Japan. Commenting on the increased market presence, Matsumoto said: “SmartStream has transformed itself over the last few years bringing a wealth of new middle and back-office automation solutions to market. I believe the climate in the Japanese market is such that firms are being forced to seek ways to achieve greater efficiency, control and drive unwanted costs from their business. SmartStream is in a strong position to help these firms, by working directly with them and through their local partners and trusted advisors.”

SmartStream has recently announced new Reconciliations and Corporate Actions solutions. These solutions together with the company’s Cash Management and Trade Process Management solutions will be made available in Japanese.

Commenting on the market’s appetite for new workflow driven STP solutions, Matsumoto said: “SmartStream sponsored research conducted earlier this year by analyst firm Celent, revealed the need for greater automation of exception management and corporate actions processes in Japan. Market, client and regulatory demands are requiring firms to examine where they can gain greater efficiency from their middle and back office infrastructures. There’s unquestionable value in these firms implementing SmartStream’s TLM solutions across the middle and back office to lower their operational risk, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and deliver a significant return on investment.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, added: “The Tokyo office is another significant step in SmartStream’s ongoing direct investment in the Asia Pacific region and follows the opening of an office in Beijing and the expansion of the Singapore office in 2008. The Japanese market has very specific automation needs and establishing an office in the country was always part of SmartStream’s expansion plans for the region. We have already had success with partners and by establishing a local presence we can continue to build on this and support institutions’ plans to deliver scalable and flexible transaction processing environments.”

To launch SmartStream’s new Japanese operations, the office will be hosting a series of client-focused events over the coming months.
To download the Celent “Post-Trade Processing in Japan” report, click here

SmartStream announces TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivering more proactive and cost-effective operations

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:30:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced TLM Reconciliations-Premium, a new solution offering pre-configured best practice reconciliation models and enhanced processing scalability.

Firms are looking to reduce their risk and transaction costs, and ensure technology projects deliver a rapid Return on Investment (ROI). In response, TLM Reconciliations-Premium offers pre-configured best practice reconciliation models developed by SmartStream through the successful delivery of projects at leading banks, assets managers, hedge funds and custodians.

TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivers scalable transaction processing through its industry-leading matching engine, with the flexibility to quickly optimise the solution to meet each individual client’s specific transaction processing needs. This increases automated match rates, keeping manual intervention to a minimum while offering and accelerated implementation that ensures a faster ROI.

To further remove risk from operations, TLM Reconciliations-Premium also provides integrated and pre-configured exception management, offering proven functionality around escalation, alerting and exceptions processing. It creates a clear separation between the root cause of an exception, its resolution and the various transactions it affects. As a result, this increases transaction visibility, enabling a single exception resolution to fix multiple breaks to significantly reduce the overall processing cost.

Neil Vernon, Senior Product Manager at SmartStream Technologies, commented: “TLM Reconciliations-Premium builds on our success with leading firms globally, where we have enabled them to drive down their transaction costs and reduce TCO. TLM, the best in class reconciliation solution, is extended still further to meet firms’ evolving business, market, regulatory and customer service needs in a utility ready model with advanced matching and exception management capabilities. As traded instruments become ever more complex, TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivers the flexibility required to react to clients processing requirements.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, added: “This announcement highlights once again how SmartStream is continuing to invest in its solutions and deliver further enhancements to the market. At a time when market conditions remain challenging, TLM Reconciliations-Premium can drive down the cost of processing transactions across multiple instrument and reconciliation types to deliver a significant return on investment.”