European financial group SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken SA) has adopted the Progress Apama Algorithmic Trading Platform to provide its buy-side customers with advanced algorithmic trading capabilities. The SEB decision is a direct result of Progress Software's recently announced partnership with ULLINK, a leading provider of electronic trading technology solutions. Under the partnership, ULLINK has fully incorporated the customisable Apama algorithmic trading capabilities into its product portfolio.
The Apama platform enables financial institutions to instantly and continuously analyse, evaluate and respond to complex market events. SEB will deliver the Apama capabilities to its buy-side client base to enable their roll out of algorithmic trading strategies, improved risk management measures and optimised pricing benefits. SEB will integrate the Apama platform with its existing Odisys order management system provided by ULLINK.
"This is an exciting deal for SEB. The linking of the Progress Apama capabilities into our existing ULLINK order routing technology provides exceptional trading capabilities to our clients," says Christer Wennerberg, business development E-TCM, SEB. With the Apama solution, Wennerberg added, SEB will be able to provide clients with access to next-generation algo trading technology that will provide an edge over competitors.
The integrated solution will enable SEB's customers to develop their own unique algo trading strategies, backtest these strategies to gauge their effectiveness and alter them once live in the market. In addition, SEB will offer its trading algorithms built in the Apama Event Modeler complex event processing (CEP) development environment directly to clients, who will access them via the Apama Dashboard Studio.
SEB will use the Apama platform across asset classes, with the initial roll out concentrating on the European exchange-traded equity and derivative markets. SEB's offices in Stockholm and London will be the first to use the product, and the group has plans to roll out the solution globally. "As interest in algorithmic trading continues to grow, sell-side institutions across the globe are seeing the need to provide customised services to their buy-side clients," said Dr John Bates, vice president, Apama Products, Progress Software. "SEB's selection of the integrated solution underlines our position as a leader within the algorithmic trading space."