Charles River Development and TradeWeb announced today that they have joined forces to deliver to fund managers what they describe as “the first fixed-income straight-through-processing solution that spans the front, middle and back office.”
Their new order management solution offers fund managers an integrated fixed income workflow solution, from “what if” analysis and pre-trade compliance through to electronic trade execution, allocation, and confirmation.
“By linking their systems, TradeWeb and Charles River are providing tremendous benefits in terms of time savings, error reduction, and increased operational efficiency,” says William Sullivan, managing director, Putnam Investments. “Now, for the first time, investment managers will be able to originate a fixed-income trade in an OMS, seamlessly route it electronically for execution, receive an electronic confirmation back in the OMS, and conduct paperless trade allocations and settlement without re-keying data.”
To achieve the seamless transfer of real-time trade data, the Charles River system will use the TradeWeb TradeXpress API via FIX. “The interface offers significant operational advantages. The lack of human intervention reduces the potential for errors and since we won’t have to re-key data, we can increase our operational efficiencies,” says John Sadowski, manager of fixed income operations, T. Rowe Price.
Charles River is a supplier of order and portfolio management systems and compliance tools. TradeWeb owns the TradeXpress network, which enables investment managers and dealers to allocate and confirm fixed-income trades electronically. It links nineteen dealers with roughly 1,200 buy-side institutions in North America and Europe.
TradeWeb cliams to have executed over 3 million trades worth more than $19 trillion since its inception in 1998.
Upon release in early 2003, the interface will be available to joint TradeWeb and Charles River clients. These joint client firms collectively have over US$2 trillion in assets under management.
“Every firm must prioritize resources and choose who they will work with. It was only natural for TradeWeb and Charles River to gravitate toward each other — each a market leader in our respective fields,” explains Jim Toffey, chief executive officer of TradeWeb Group.
“The industry has been talking about fixed income straight-through-processing for years, but we are now seeing some real momentum,” adds Peter Lambertus, president and chief executive officer of Charles River Development. “A partnership between the two market leaders increases the likelihood that fixed income STP will become a reality — and, sooner rather than later.”