We are able to provide assessments covering all areas of the infrastructure and applications organization plus its relationships with the business. We use a proven process to evaluate the current situation, its strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Our findings can include a peer analysis to provide our clients with benchmarks and best practices. Using this information we are able to produce short, medium and long term action plans with associated costs and benefits, plus options and decisions that can be made in order to satisfy the business requirements.
Our approach can be tailored to individual product areas/lines of business, or individual parts of the organization. Reviews can cover technology areas including package software, operational areas and business areas (Fixed Income, Credit and Market Risk, Hedge Funds).
We are able to provide a service designed to assist technology organizations understand their current application portfolio and build a multi-year plan to fit the business model going forward. Using extensive merger experience, we have developed a process to assess the systems environment against current and future business requirements to decide on the correct approach for the applications/infrastructure. This would include a buy/hold/sell assessment as well as the recommended approach for implementation including a cost/benefit analysis and ROI models. We also have a deep understanding of the issues that need to be addressed in installing new business solutions within the existing systems environment.
We have extensive experience in implementing project management techniques focusing on establishing the factors having the most impact and highest risk, plus their key dependencies. We use proven methods to enable projects to be managed successfully with right level of communication to both the business and IT at the highest level.
Our services can be utilized at the individual project level or across large global projects. We have knowledge about the local markets as far as technology use plus a very good understanding of the critical factors required ensuring global applications are implemented successfully and as importantly continue to run efficiently.
We are able to provide services that would enable IT organizations enhance their infrastructure environments. We have extensive experience in dealing with CEO/line of business management plus heavy vendor management experience covering all facets of infrastructure. This includes tools, methods, process, transparent costing and service levels, use of market data, and technology base. We can provide “stand in “assistance across the various organization levels including managing the overall process.
Closely aligned with application portfolio management/legacy strategy is the ability to do thorough architecture reviews of the technology base and its alignment with the business model. In offering this service we bring to the table experienced individuals in the use of messaging and XML, Modeling, SOA, and BPM plus a process and tools to enable effective development including the use of agile onshore/offshore techniques.
We provide services that enable a business to outsource the building of a software product or an ASP service. We use an agile methodology that has been modified so that it works for doing dual shore development using our Panamanian facility. This methodology allows us to provide a reliable product quickly at a reasonable cost. We are currently employing this approach in the hedge fund services and bond trading areas.
We can provide a team of expert software engineers that can provide custom development services for a specific project. This team can be located on client site or can be a blend of on-site and off-site resources. The engagements can be run using our agile methodology or they can use more conventional approaches. The team can work next to the client’s people under the client’s management or they can function in a more stand-alone manner depending on the client’s needs.
To learn more about our work and services, please contact us.
Our people have worked on building, managing and deploying large cross product Credit Risk system. This system included:
- The design and implementation of data loading services for fixed income products.
- Designing and implementing an amended Basel compliant data model for fixed income products.
- Designing and implementing a market data database for supplying market and static data to the valuation and curve services for the fixed income products.
The above work was done using J2EE, C++, WebLogic Server, Oracle, Rational Rose.
Our people have worked designing and architecting a service-oriented Basel II compliant architecture for a major Canadian Bank. This included:
- Services model that defined the services required to produce the economic capital calculations required.
- A message model that defined the messages and message content that the services would use to communicate with each other.
- A data model that could be used to store the trade and loan detail data for calculation and reporting purposes.
- Proof of concept prototypes that could be used to validate the architecture from a functional and performance perspective.
The above work was done using J2EE, WebLogic Integration Server, Oracle, and Rational Rose.
Our people have worked doing Basel II facilitation work for a large global investment bank. This work included:
- Working with the business people on the credit side to define the type of calculations that will be used.
- Compiling a list of all the global credit risk systems within the institution.
- Evaluate the capabilities of each system with regard to being able to supply data to the new credit processes.
- Present a roadmap for system consolidation.
Our people have worked doing Basel II facilitation work for a large global investment bank. This work included:
- Designing and developing external facing web front-ends for trade capture.
- Designing and developing the object and data models that are required for credit derivatives capture and processing.
- Designing and developing the workflow models for the credit derivative products.
- Designing and developing the data models to store the credit derivative data.
The above work was done using .NET (C#), XML, Java, C++, and Oracle technologies.
Our people have business experience in this area that includes:
- Building, deploying and operating a high-volume distributed FX trading platforms for a market maker.
- Managing a Global FX Back Office platform for a top tier FX bank.
Our people have experience re-engineering a vendor-based international banking package to create a custom back office platform that could be deployed regionally to provide high-volume straight through processing services for a tier 1 firm. This included:
- Analysis of process limiting levers.
- Re-structuring of process functions.
- Automated links to all electronic capture vehicles.
- “Clean for Clearance” approach.
- Electronic links to Front-Office solutions.
- Applied business rules to limit manual intervention.
- Automated Matching of confirms and reconciliation.
- Electronically supported Queue based workflow for operations.
Our people have worked designing, implementing a proof of concept rich internet application for FX trade routing. This included:
- Collaborating with the owners of a legacy web application to convert the middle tier to a Service Orientated Architecture.
- Re-engineering the user experience to optimize the workflow and increase the visual appeal of the legacy application.
- Implement the new user interface using Silverlight 2.0, providing a more responsive interface and featuring an in-browser virtual desktop.
Our people have development experience in this area that includes designing and implementing a cross product straight through processing system for an emerging markets desk at a major bank. This system included:
- A service based architecture that defined all of the services and interfaces needed to process trades.
- A cross product data model that included the definitions of most fixed income and equity products.
- Message models that define the content of the various messages that were processed in the system.
- Message models that define the interfaces to outside processing services such as FIX and SWIFT.
- Workflow models that define how the workflow would work for the various products supported by the system.
The technology used was Java, Rendezvous, C++, and Oracle.
Our people have development experience in this area that includes designing and developing a hybrid derivatives pricing and trading system for a major investment bank. This system included:
- An extensible object model and data model that covered most fixed income and derivative products.
- A distributed pricing engine for analytics that included object caching.
- A visual framework for creating new trades.
- A spreadsheet metaphor for trade entry and viewing.
The technology used for this system was Visualworks, C++, TIBCO information Bus, GemStone and Sybase.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying a system to support the hedge funds credit derivatives trading and risk management activities. This development effort included:
- Developing the front ends that are required for trade capture position and risk management.
- Designing a implementing the framework and infrastructure that is necessary for managing the client’s trades and positions.
- Designing and implementing a framework for the various risk calculators.
- Designing and implementing the framework and infrastructure for trade and risk reporting.
- Designing and implementing the data model for storing the credit derivative trades onto the database.
The system was built using Microsoft .Net technology and Oracle.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying a system to support a hedge fund administration services companies collateral management system. This development effort included:
- Design and develop a configurable user interface to support the collateral management process.
- Designing a implementing the framework and infrastructure that is necessary for managing the collateral.
- Designing and implementing the framework and infrastructure for collateral reporting.
The system was built using Java 1.4, Struts, and Tomcat, XML/XSLT.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying a complete Hedge Fund technology solution. This included:
- The setup of the development group and QA groups.
- Working with operations to design and implement the security master.
- Working closely with operations to integrate the trade capture and processing elements of the software.
- Designing and implementing the reporting framework that could be used by both operations staff and clients.
- Design and develop a configurable user interface to support the operations process that could be deployed using “zero touch” deployment techniques.
The system was built using Java 1.4 and Delphi 6.0.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying a counterparty and dealer management solution. This included:
- Designing an application that aggregated counterparty and dealer data from many different sources into a single portal application.
- Provides daily trading activity views, along with Trade Warehouse views.
- The application supplies qualitative and quantitative information about the active trading counterparties to both portfolio managers and traders.
- The application runs in Internet Explorer and provides export capabilities to Excel, Word and a time series analysis tool.
The system was built using .NET 3.5, WPF, Web Services, C# and SQL Server.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying an Investment Relationship solution. This included:
- Designing an application that manages company / contact information.
- Keeps track of meetings, and the creation of follow up items.
- Views are configurable, and can be exported to Excel in a variety of ways
The system was built using .NET 3.5, WPF, Web Services, C# and SQL Server.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying an Credit Research solution. This included:
- Designing an application that captures and manages information on Credit Risk.
- Keeps track of Credit names, and provides extensive search and filtering capability.
- The solution allows credit analysts to post credit write-ups via Email, the system then picks them up and categorizes them appropriately.
The system was built using .NET 3.5, WPF, Web Services, C# and SQL Server.
Our people have worked designing, implementing, deploying and maintaining an Index Options trading system for a small hedge fund. This included:
- Functioned as a virtual CIO to the company providing full IT services that included:
- Hardware and software selection.
- Network and telecom consulting.
- Hosting consulting.
- Construction of an IT plan complete with costs and 3 year budget estimates.
- Designing an application that supports floor trading on the CME as well as the middle and back office feeds to the operations service providers.
- After deployment we functioned as the companies IT staff making changes to the application as the business expands. All of this type of work is done out of our Panamanian facility.
The system was built using Java and SQL Server.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying a Collateral Management System for a large Hedge Fund. This included:
- Designing an 3 tier application that consolidates collateral and funding details from multiple legacy systems, and enables user correction of source data.
- The application provides aggregation and user categorization of collateral, and provides drill downs to funding and individual trade contributions.
- This WPF application launches from IE on the desktop and provides export and import from MSExcel.
The system was built using .NET 3.5,WCF, WPF, C# and SQL Server.
Our people have worked designing, implementing and deploying an anonymous Fixed Income Trading environment. This included:
- Designing an application that provides anonymous auction capabilities for a number of different Fixed Income products.
- Providing for ASP deployment capabilities which allow the application to run in a hosted environment and provides the user with a secure downloadable application that can be run on their desktop.
- UI’s were built also for WPF and Silverlight, WPF for the Desktop, and Silverlight for Web Users.
The system was built using .NET 3.5, WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, C# and SQL Server.
We provided the design and implementation for a Silverlight application shell. This framework provided the following features:
- User customizable gadget sidebars where the user can:
- control which sidebars are shown
- drag and drop
- access the add gadget
- change or remove the
- expand and collapse each gadget and resize vertically
- resize each sidebar horizontally
- Intelligently resize or collapse gadgets within a
- Provide tabbed navigation within the content area
- Provide desktop like application experience in browser
We also provided overall Creative Design support and styling, to ensure that the portal had a superior User Experience.
The framework will be used for the clients IT team to develop a series of gadgets providing a single point of access to their clients for all brokerage services.
The system was built using Silverlight 3.0
The client, a major US brokerage, was entering a new line of business as a Prime Broker. The firm already had in place many of the services and systems needed to support the business, but they required a single, highly automated, means for prime broker clients to be able to monitor and manage the flow of business.
The client also wished to have this “portal” be a differentiating factor, against competitors, in the launch of this business.
Our people, using a basic framework structure to separate the interaction of marshalling the movement of data from/to the backend systems, from the user interaction, worked with the client using an Agile approach to develop mock-ups of the client services.
The work was all performed in Silverlight, with web services as the back end integrator.
The delivered portal, used by internal support staff, as well as external clients, allowed user to create and manage their own “dashboard” view of the data and services using a selectable set of gadgets.
The portal allowed the user to select and view, request and search reports, manage trades, file uploads. Considerable design effort was given to reducing user interactions, and to have intuitive responses from the portal.
Our work combines the industry perspectives and understanding of the strategic changes underway in the financial industry with the depth of experience that the firm has in all key areas of the capital markets business.
The firm has expertise in trading, processing and all facets of risk management, in addition to proven ability to build highly efficient, robust technology infrastructure. Beyond strategy work we have done for industry participants, as well as the firms that service them, we have designed and built entire solution sets for top-tier firms.
We have executed and currently working on projects on the following areas:
- Risk Management
- Credit Derivatives
- Foreign Exchange
- Straight Through Processing
- Derivatives
- Hedge Funds
- Electronic Exchanges
- Online Brokerage
- Prime Broker
Our people have development experience in this area that includes designing and implementing a cross product straight through processing system for an emerging markets desk at a major bank. This system included:
- A service based architecture that defined all of the services and interfaces needed to process trades.
- A cross product data model that included the definitions of most fixed income and equity products.
- Message models that define the content of the various messages that were processed in the system.
- Message models that define the interfaces to outside processing services such as FIX and SWIFT.
- Workflow models that define how the workflow would work for the various products supported by the system.
The technology used was Java, Rendezvous, C++, and Oracle.
Our people have worked designing, implementing a proof of concept rich internet application for FX trade routing. This included:
- Collaborating with the owners of a legacy web application to convert the middle tier to a Service Orientated Architecture.
- Re-engineering the user experience to optimize the workflow and increase the visual appeal of the legacy application.
- Implement the new user interface using Silverlight 2.0, providing a more responsive interface and featuring an in-browser virtual desktop.