Growing transaction volumes in Asia in recent years have seen both buy-side and sell-side institutions racing to upgrade front-office functions in order to boost speed and capacity. This has resulted in severe stress on supporting systems and processes, and the need for back offices to achieve higher automation and operational efficiency.
To cater for institutional demand for post-trade solutions that are in tune with Asia's fast-changing regulatory environment, financial technology provider SunGard is beefing up its capital markets business in the region, hiring across its sales, products and supporting functions.
Jean Remi Lopez, senior pre-sales manager for post-trade solutions (capital markets), says the broadening range of internal and external crossing options available in Asia is “changing the way people are doing business”, but he also detects a shift in client priorities. “Until last year, it was all about speed. Now, people are trying to look at the risk and the quality of the execution. This has been prompted by the regulators who responding to a number of events in the market, such as the US flash crash,” he says.
SunGard has 24 offices in Asia Pacific, and the region's growing importance for its capital markets business was underlined recently with the appointment of Eric Wicart as senior vice president, sales & operations, Asia-Pacific and Japan for post-trade solutions.
The group's capital markets business offers solutions to help banks, broker-dealers and futures commission merchants improve the efficiency, transparency and control of their securities and derivatives trading and processing. These include a suite of front-to-back, multi-market solutions that cover market and credit risk management, order and position management, securities financing and collateral management, data management, accounting and tax reporting and compliance. Globally, these solutions manage over nine trillion dollars in securities lending.
“SunGard has decided to bolden its position in Asia. Previously, we were dependent on regional distribution units, and now we have consolidated our structure where capital markets has its full management team with full authority locally. We have increased our team size across the Asia-Pacific region. It's been a real shift in the way we service our customers because we do believe that Asia Pacific is a fast-growing area,” Lopez said.
Core SunGard products include Adaptiv, which provides enterprise-wide risk management and operations solutions, and the Stream Post-Trade derivatives solutions suite, which offers real-time matching, clearing and accounting automation and workflow STP for exchange-traded and settled derivatives. In addition, the Valdi suite includes a smart router for equities, bonds and options markets in the US, Europe and Asia. Valdi is offered by SunGard's global trading business, which provides multi-asset, front-to back-office trading solutions for equities, fixed income, derivatives and commodities on exchanges worldwide.
“The over-the-counter (OTC) departments of our clients have all their flows converge towards the cleared division for the OTC business. So the swaps and other OTC products are now put into the flow of the listed instruments operations group. So all of that is part of our responsibility. Everything that is listed – equities, derivatives and now the OTC clearing – is part of the responsibility of the post-trade group,” Lopez noted.
Author: Jill Wong