Milan-based Banca Akros SpA, the investment banking arm of Banca Popolare di Milano Group, has selected Summit’s Transact ASP platform for FX cash and FX option trading, market making, and risk management activities.
Submit reckons the deal – coupled with another to be announced shortly – signifies a change in the cautious attitude investment banks have towards ASP solutions – largely because of the cost savings.
The new FX capabilities join the interest-rate derivatives processing services Transact ASP currently provides to the bank. Summit replaces an internal FX trading application and a well-known FX options trading software product.
Transact ASP is the Internet-enabled version of Summit Systems’s STP transaction platform, designed to provide the trading, risk management, and back-office needs of fixed income, derivatives, treasury, and commercial lending business operations.
For the two Banca Akros FX desks, Summit will support FX spot, forward, swap, option (plain vanilla and exotic), and FX future trades. Front-office traders will be furnished with real-time position management, and will employ Summit’s real-time position hedging with interest-rate products such as deposits, FRAs, interest-rate swaps, and interest-rate futures. The firm will utilize Transact ASP’s real-time connections with EBS and D3000 dealing systems, and as well as feed real-time market data to the ASP platform.
Banca Akros also will use Summit’s e-Toolkit to give Microsoft Excel users the ability to directly access and employ sophisticated Summit functions and calculation services within their spreadsheets.
“With its depth and scope of capabilities, Summit enables us to consolidate all of the position and risk exposure management related to our interest rate and forex businesses,” says Cesare Nuti, head of foreign exchange operations at the bank. “And the annual software license rental fee for Summit’s ASP service is well suited to our budget policy. We don’t give up anything because we’re using an ASP-based service-Transact ASP offers the same functionality as a conventional on-site installation, and includes real-time connections with EBS, D3000 and market data sources.”
The head of Banca Akros’ FX cash desk, Fabrizio Caputi, noted: “We like the fast deal capture Summit provides, plus the real-time FX position and trade blotter facilities. And of course, the consolidated risk analysis viewer and real-time hedging with full drill-down capabilities are extremely useful to us.”
Paolo Tradati, head of the FX option desk, said: “Summit’s in-depth support for a wide array of financial instruments was a major selling point. Not only does the system provide a large range of pre-defined exotic FX options, it gives us a dedicated pricing grid for strategies and the ability to manage complex structured products that combine interest rate and forex assets.”
Michael Ctorza, Sales Manager at Summit’s Paris office, commented on the new contract. “Our Transact ASP platform is well positioned to fully meet the needs of corporations and small- to medium-size financial institutions because of three major reasons. First, it provides clients with all the financial instruments and functionality they need. Second, it eliminates the need for any IT infrastructure-quite valuable in today’s business climate where cost reduction is critical. Lastly, our pre-packaged application setup and static/market data feeds allow our customers to be up and in production in just two months.”
Banca Akros, founded in February 1987, was acquired by Banca Popolare di Milano Group in 1998. About 250 employees are currently working in the headquarters in Milan, Italy. The bank also is present in New York as Akros Securities.
Summit Systems provides front-to-back transaction processing support for fixed income, treasury, derivatives and commercial lending businesses. It provides integrated trading, operations and enterprise risk management software to banks, financial institutions, and capital markets participants worldwide. Summit, with headquarters in New York and full-service offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Misys plc, the UK-based global software products company