financial tech/2

© Reprinted from EUROMONEY · August 2004 www.euromoney.com

Financial technology

Financial TechnologyUsers’ Survey


FROM HIS OFFICE on the sixty-ninth floorof the Empire State Building, John Beckert,CEO of Cognotec, looked out over NewYork harbour. “I was transfixed,” he says.“The Queen Mary 2 was turning out of herberth, and it was so incredibly slow. In theend I had to tear myself away and go homefor some dinner.”

Moving 150,000 tons of ocean liner in aconfined space is an immensely challeng-ing task. “It’s kind of like a large bankchanging its underlying technology,” Beck-ert says. “It’s going to take a very long time,and it needs to be done very carefully.”

He’s not wrong. Banking is arguably theonly large industry that still writes its ownsoftware. This has led to such a fragmentedfinancial technology market that somebanks can’t take it all in, or can’t find a suit-ably high-quality offering for what theywant. But sticking your head in the sandisn’t going to help when your competitorssteal a march on you because they havebeen smart enough to introduce a new soft-ware tool or brave enough to totally recon-figure their core processing. The lattercould well be one of the most costly,lengthy and complex projects a bank everundertakes. This is no six-month job.Andreas Andreades, CEO of Temenos, reck-ons that it takes about five years to go froma bank’s initial requests for proposals to the

final implementation of his company’s T24or TCB core processing systems. One of thebiggest challenges, of course, is keeping thebank operational for the entire time. AsAndreades says: “If our system falls down,the bank can’t open.”

Not all projects are quite as involved asthis, but even when installing a relativelysmall and cheap piece of technology, thebank has to be absolutely convinced thatthe platform is stable and that support is on hand.

Top of the classThe Euromoney financial technology

users’ survey looks at just these sort ofissues. We asked users to score providers onthe basis of not just their products’ usabil-ity, but on service levels, return on invest-ment, and API (application programminginterface, see box on page 38). Within eachparticular segment of the business this hasgiven us a listing of companies that excel atwhat they do. For full details of how thesurvey was carried out, see the methodol-ogy on page 47.

Some of the companies that haveperformed well, such as Sweden’s Algorith-mica, are small. Algorithmica has just 20employees. Others, such as Oracle, areglobal corporations. But whatever theirsize, the companies at the top of their class

had to offer consistently good products andservices at a price the market felt was justifi-able. For more details about some of thecompanies that did well, see the profiles.

According to the survey, usability andservice were the most important factors toclients, with API the least critical. Anecdo-tally, however, cost appears to be the leastimportant issue affecting banks’ choice oftechnology vendors. Its impact tends tocome earlier, when companies decidewhether to buy in a new system at all, orwhether they can meet their needs in-house. Many banks – of all types and sizes –are running legacy systems that might beup to 30 or 40 years old at their core. Over-hauling something so embedded is amental leap for a bank as well as a physicalchallenge.

For Scott Abbey, chief technology officerat UBS: “The question of buy versus build isa simple one. It depends which is more effi-cient and effective.” As simple as that. UBSdoes seem to care more about costs thansome other banks. “We’ve been aggressivelymanaging costs, and are still pursuingthat,” says Abbey, confident that this hasnot had a negative impact. Certainly from aclient perspective, UBS is doing thingsright. In Euromoney’s annual technologyawards (November 2003), UBS won 11 ofthe 45 banking awards and was highly


The search forsimplicityEuromoney's first financial technology users’ survey polled the market to find thesoftware companies that had hit the heights expected of them by an ever moredemanding financial services industry. As Jonathan Turton discovered, it’s anindustry that has never been afraid to get its programming feet wet, but thestakes are getting higher as compliance demands on financial institutionsincrease. • Research and additional reporting from Erica Mold, Kap Monet and Liz Mundy


commended in a further six. “We focus onclients rather than on the competition,”says Abbey. “If someone develops some-thing new, we see whether our clients cantake advantage of it before thinking aboutinvesting.”

If a bank does decide to install a newsystem, it might have to consider what thebest licensing model is, which mightdepend on its internal resources. Cognotec,for example, sells FX market data andexecution systems that are used by many ofthe world’s leading banks. Some choose tooperate the system in house on a licencebasis, others choose the ASP outsourcedbureau approach. This latter model wasdesigned with tier-two banks in mind, butsome top-tier banks are also interested inthe flexibility it affords. Beckert points outthat developments in technology meanthat smaller banks can compete with – andeven outperform – their larger competitors.“I’m not saying they always will, after allsome tier-one banks have better technol-ogy. The point is that it’s the leverage ofthat technology,” he says.

The cheap hardware dividendHeinz Scheiwiller, deputy CEO of

Schroders in Zurich, expands on this. “Ashardware costs have come down, smallerbanks can compete on intelligence,” hesays. “Ten years ago, we spent as much on hardware as on software and this meant stretching ourselves to the limit;now hardware is so cheap that we can focus our resources on dealing with thecomplexities.”

In the fragmented technology marketthat confronts the financial services world,complexity is certainly a major problem, ifnot the major problem. It can lead some toopt for the package solution rather than aseries of best-of-breed products. The goal ofhaving perfectly stable, seamlesslyconnected best of breeds is still some wayoff, despite the recent strides that havebeen taken.

Sometimes the best can be built only inhouse. Plenty of banks still build their ownsoftware, but more and more are recogniz-ing that this is not their core competency.The decision to buy might also be eased by the increasing ability to customize thesoftware.

Customization takes two forms: first innegotiations with the vendor before sale inorder to get exactly the system you want.


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This isn’t just a question of changing thecolour of the interface, but can meanaddressing a very particular need they have– for example coverage of a particular assetclass. The vendor will often accommodatethem in this, especially if developmentcosts are shared.

The second form of customization – theAPI – is carried out by the client, and meansthat software can be tweaked more substan-tially. One of the great benefits this canbring is improved connectivity – whichhelps the bank overcome the complexityproblem mentioned above.

Connectivity is a substantial challenge inlarge banks that might be running severaldifferent systems in each part of the busi-ness. Some banks choose to consolidatesystems to reduce the complexity of intra-system connections. Most are loth toconsolidate right down to a handful ofsystems because it is too high a risk.However, industry onlookers are predictingthat some degree of consolidation is bothinevitable and desirable.

Strong survivorsFinancial services companies are finding

themselves at an important juncture. Afterthe overblown promises of the internet-related boom, where every new companyclaimed to have an astonishing platformthat would revolutionize banking, banksbecame a little wary of the sales pitches,and of course many tech vendors quietlydisappeared. But, all this time, the bankshave been slowly becoming ever morereceptive to what is available and thoserobust technologies that have survived arein a strong position.

Foreign exchange epitomizes this transi-tion. When the first FX portals appeared onthe horizon at the end of the 1990s, thebanks were interested but most remainednon-committal. It was a question of “if”rather than “when” they would take off.Five years later and the biggest portals, suchas FXall, are changing the way banks dobusiness with their clients and counter-parties, and even changing the way traderswork. Iain Doran, European head of e-commerce and prime brokerage atJPMorgan, points out how jobs are evolv-ing. “The machines quote prices all day,and the traders have to manage around thatand be aware of liquidity. It’s a differentapproach to trading.” Doran believes thatthose banks where traders adapt best will be

those that prosper. Investing money is onething, but investing time in cultural changeis also important.

Some industry insiders predict that virtu-ally every bank employee must become arisk manager. Risk management certainlysits ever closer to the core of financialservices companies and technology has avital part to play in this. Looming over allEuropean banks, and the largest US banks,is Basle II. Complying with Basle II’srequirements is a technology issue. Thequality and quantity of data neededexceeds what many banks have beencapable of, and this means turning to tech-nology vendors to help out.

Paul Cartwright, global managing part-ner, Basle II, at Accenture, explains thatthere are two situations that the consul-tancy encounters. The first is where bankshave an idea what they need to do but wantto do it faster, better and cheaper. Thesecond is those that recognize the opportu-nities Basle II brings to improve their busi-ness. After all, although some of therequirements might seem onerous they are,as Cartwright puts it, “a codification of bestpractice”, so this is ultimately good forbanking. There are a raft of technologycompanies offering solutions to banks.

“No-one’s distinguished themselves yet,”says Cartwright. “SAP has thought itthrough as Germany was ahead of thecurve, so it’s had more time.” SAP wasinvolved with Accenture in a project toassess banks’ readiness for Basle II. It foundthat Europe was generally – and unsurpris-ingly – far ahead of the US banks. But asCartwright points out, US banks havetended to have stronger risk managementsystems, so they don’t have as far to travel.

Banks face a structural problem whengrappling with their data. As they haveevolved and expanded their business, eachnew line has grown into a separate silo, andaligning data across silos is technically andculturally complex. But banks are increas-ingly seeking a cross-asset view of risk.Cartwright believes that when they havethis they will start to get a better idea ofwhere they are actually making money,which might not be where they thoughttheir core competencies lay.

IBM believes that this is an opportunityto transform the business. Being IBM, it hascoined a phrase for the new model of bank-ing it would like to see: “on demand”. Thisis essentially a componentized structure, inwhich banks assess what they’re missingand plug the gap with the appropriatesystem. If such a system is not available, thebank will probably build it itself. However,the whole concept is far removed from the “heart and lung transplant” as MarkChetwood, director banking EMEA, puts it,of replacing swathes of banking systems.

Customized suitesOracle takes a similar stand. David

Klebba, senior director, financial servicesindustry unit, points out that no bankwould design its architecture in this waytoday. He sees that applications such aspayments that occur across a bank’s busi-ness lines should be moved to a utilitariansystem. Klebba – not surprisingly givenOracle’s large-scale products – also pointsout that some global banks are thinking ofmoving to suite-type products and willthen build the missing functionality them-selves. Whether they buy or build whatthey need will probably still come down toindividual banks’ preferences. What doesseem clear is that componentization willlead to consolidation in the financialservices software industry.

Our survey reveals that there are goodsmall companies out there competing ably


Off the shelf gets aproprietary flavourAPI stands for application programminginterface. Sadly for linguistic purists ithas become a geekspeak verb; so bankscan “API into another bank” or, as oneuser puts it: “We just API what we need.”But API matters. Crudely put, it is amethod of allowing programmers todevelop additional functionality toboost the capabilities of a given piece ofsoftware. It is a way for banks to retainproprietary control over off-the-shelfproducts, and can mean that a lesserproduct can rival a more expensive oneafter the in-house programmers havegot their hands on it. Any productworth its salt in the financial technol-ogy world (and far beyond – Google, forexample, offers API tools) will give itsusers the opportunity to build on top,thereby combining the best of both buyand build worlds.

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with the larger operations. But traditionalaggregators such as Reuters and SunGardare always on the look-out for companies tobring into their stables. Temenos’sAndreades believes that those companiesthat can remain independent and findthemselves as consolidators need “excellentproducts, global distribution, critical mass,and an established client base”.

JPMorgan’s Doran agrees that a goodproduct is not enough. “Lots of softwarevendors have something interesting – aclever idea, nicely done. But we have to askhow we’re going to get it into the bank.Most companies seem to massively under-estimate the importance of this, and aremassively underskilled in the complexity ofimplementation.”

So, while many technology companiescan take heart from this survey, and manybanks can get a new perspective on themarket, it appears that there is still someway to go before the Queen Mary is going tofeel comfortable navigating between thetechies’ small commercial harbour craft.

To emerge as the overall best company inour survey meant satisfying customers in awide range of areas and categories. Thatmight suggest one of the big boys – Oracleor SunGard, for example. But the winner,Algorithmica Research, has just 20 staff.


In 1994, Niclas Holm was a computerscience student with a part-time job writinganalytics software for Swedbank. “I wassurprised to see the relatively simple toolsused by their traders and analysts to solvecomplex tasks,” he says. The idea for Algo-rithmica was born. Holm and MagnusNyström funded the company themselvesand it remains firmly in private hands.Swedbank is still a client.

The core product, Quantlab, providestools for real-time quantitative analysis,enabling users to price, trade, promote andmanage their financial transactions tohigher standards. “It replaces the all-toofamiliar jungle of Visual Basic hacks andspreadsheet add-ins – all of them depen-dent on different databases and real-timefeeds – with one coherent open platformwhere analysts and traders share the sameenvironment,” says Holm.

Grappling with quants is not for thefaint-hearted. The trick, Holm says, is tofocus solely on that area. “We see manycompetitors lacking solid market experi-ence – especially in quantitative analytics.This limits their ability to implement ideasand concepts from the market quickly.”

Quantitative tools are becoming evermore integrated into the trading salesprocess. “Gone are the days when analyticssoftware was used only by guys with a PhDin physics – it is quickly becoming an essen-tial part of the trading platform,” saysHolm. He sees this trend continuing, whichmeans more banks, asset managers, hedgefunds and corporate treasuries will bemoving to third-party offerings. This islikely to increase functionality and helpthem control development costs andreduce operational risk.

As well as relying on its in-house brains,Algorithmica has close ties with academia.With the Swedish Royal Institute of Tech-nology it hosts the annual Finanskontaktseminar, a summit for practitioners,students and academics working in quanti-tative financial analysis. Nor is it afraid ofspending money to boost its abilities. In2001 it merged with Fat Tails Analysis,improving its development capabilities andits consultancy operations.

Algorithmica topped the overall cross-category survey, but it also came top in API.Holm explains the benefits. “TypicalQuantlab users include highly secretivehedge funds with extensive developmentcapabilities that appreciate the ability to

create their own solutions on top of thebuilt-in functionality,” he says.

Powerful API capabilities do not meanthat Algorithmica sells only out of the box.Swedish occupational pension companyAlecta had to replace a discontinued nicheproduct. “Only two vendors offered anexact fit, but one of them didn’t want toslim down its overall offering. Algorithmicagave us exactly what we wanted,” says TonyPersson, fixed-income analyst at Alecta.

Other users talk about the product’s easeof use. “We used to need skilled users tomake worksheets,” says another client. “Butwe wanted portfolio managers to be able touse it themselves.” Now this client uses it intwo ways. “It sits at the front end, soanalysts use it and portfolio managers use itat the trading desks. We also use the API,and access the functions through the code.”

Algorithmica wants to build on its strongclient base in the Nordic region. “The nextstep is for us to focus on the Europeanmarket, with Germany and the UK lookingespecially promising,” says Holm. And withsurvey results like these, who could blamehim for being optimistic? Jonathan Turton

Cognotec began by offering corporateclients real-time information on foreignexchange and money markets. Then the Irish company figured that if peoplecould see the prices, why should they

CognotecSetting the pace in FX

AlgorithmicaResearchMarket-friendly quants

Holm

Beckert

2003 Global Capital Markets SurveyBanks/financial institutions Banks/financial institutionsTreasury % IT Services %Euromoney 53 Euromoney 47The Economist 48 The Economist 39Financial Times 45 Financial Times 30The Banker 38 Wall Street Journal 27Bloomberg Markets 34 BusinessWeek 27Wall Street Journal 30 The Banker 25Institutional Investor 27 Risk 21BusinessWeek 24 Asiamoney 15Risk 20 Bloomberg Markets 15CFO 16 Finance Asia 14IFR 15 Institutional Investor 13Asiamoney 14 IFR 11Newsweek 13 Newsweek 10Time 12 Fortune 10Global Investor 12 CFO 9Fortune 12 Global Finance 9Forbes 12 Forbes 9Finance Asia 11 Time 9Corporate Finance 9 Global Investor 8Global Finance 9 Corporate Finance 8Int'l Herald Tribune 8 Int'l Herald Tribune 5Harvard Bus. Review 8 Euroweek 5Euroweek 6 Harvard Bus. Review 5Latin Finance 1 Latin Finance 0


not be enabled to trade off them. Thus was born the first automated

foreign exchange dealing system. Sincethen Cognotec has managed to stay at the forefront of foreign exchange tradingtechnology.

Its two core products are Autodeal andMarket Rate Manager, which cuts throughthe fog that often obscures market ratefeeds streaming – or stuttering – into bankstrading rooms.

CEO John Beckert describes the earlyyears: “We cut our teeth being beaten up bytop-tier banks to develop systems to theirrequirements,” he says. He is careful not to complain about this too much. “It’sgood to have leading-edge bank partnersbecause they will always be pushing thelimits,” he says.

Cognotec bathes in the luxury of appeal-ing to a wide range of market participants.“Our client base is anyone in the foodchain,” asserts Beckert who likes selling theconcept of automated foreign exchangetrading rather than focusing on sellingCognotec per se. But as the company moreor less owns that particular niche, it’s asmart move.

Cognotec topped our survey for its pric-ing engine, and it is proud of the fact that itcan price “almost” as well as the trader –and of course is a lot more consistent, andcan handle more deals.

Melanie King, e-business manager forglobal markets at Standard Chartered inLondon, is certainly a fan of the MarketRate Manager product.

“We traditionally haven’t had reliablesource feeds for all of the currencies we dealin,” she says. “Now we can ensure that weare publishing accurate and representativeprices. It has allowed us to expand ourcurrency set.”

JPMorgan liked Cognotec enough towhite label its products. This will allow it tosupply its financial institution clients withtheir own custom branded foreignexchange e-commerce platform.

Iain Doran, JPMorgan’s European head ofe-commerce and prime brokerage, says:“Cognotec is the only company reallydoing what we wanted. We don’t wantsomeone learning with us. Our number oneconsideration was for a product to be upand running.”

Cognotec has been around for 14 years,and there seems no reason to doubt its lead-ing position in the market. JT

DST International has over two decades’experience in developing and implement-ing asset and workflow management solu-tions. Its early offerings were institutionalback-office solutions but they now includeintegrated solutions for financial servicescompanies’ front and middle offices. “If ourclients need it we want to be the one toprovide it. If we don’t yet have it we’llacquire it and integrate it,” says KimHolloway, global sales director.

DSTi’s systems are implemented in about60% of the top 100 fund managers inEurope. In total it has 600 clients, and hasoffices in 15 of the 60 countries where ithas customers. Growth areas includeEurope, the US, and China. To accompanythis expansion, CEO Mike Winn points outthat the company's flagship product,HiPortfolio, “has been extensivelyenhanced to meet all the local regulatorymarket requirements, including being inthe local languages”.

Demand for HiPortfolio, the offering forinvestment administration and securitiesprocessing, keeps on increasing. DSTiinvests continually in the product – puttingin over 30,000 man-days a year. For thelatest edition, HiPortfolio/3, it hasrevamped the technology base and operat-ing model.

Mark Harrison, head of IT at BNP Paribas,is considering upgrading from HiPortfo-lio/2. One reason for his interest is

enhanced back-up. “HiPortfolio/3 willallow ‘in-flight’ back-ups,” Harrison says.“Normally you need to stop the system toback it up for security and disaster recovery.But this way, the back-up is done while thesystem is running, making it muchstronger.”

DSTi has signed many new clients withits latest edition, including Axa-Minmetals,a Sino-French life insurance firm. DSTiclaims to be the first non-Chinese companyto enter China’s financial informationtechnology market.

DSTi believes that its products are usedmost innovatively in the UK. Nick Lucocq,head of UK operations support at MorleyFund Management, uses a relational data-base program (part of HiReporting) for avariety of data needs, going beyond thestandard internal reports for which DSTideveloped the product.

DSTi was originally Clark and Tilley,before it was bought by parent companyDST Systems, Inc. more than 10 years ago.Erica Mold

Mighter Gissing’s niche product, ConteX,provides more specialized data distributionthan Reuters and Bloomberg. “They havethe basic functionalities but we can cater tomore sophisticated requirements, “ saysRichard Gissing, the company’s founderand chief technology officer.

ConteX sits between the bank and exter-nal systems. It sends data automatically inthe correct formats to multiple vendors,where others would send it to only one. “Itsimplifies an otherwise complicatedprocess,” says a vice-president at a majorbank. “It meets our business requirementsquickly, requires less administration andultimately lowers costs.”

As a niche product, ConteX faces compe-tition from in-house software. However, itoften replaces such systems when theyprove inadequate. “In-house technology isnot flexible. The people that built it leaveand protocols change,” says Gissing. Work-ing with an outside vendor means compa-nies can change the software as required,and this, he argues, is ultimately cheaper.


Mighter GissingSimplification is crucial

DST InternationalHigh-end management

Winn


The bank’s vice-president certainly believesConteX provides a function that wouldsoak up too many resources were it devel-oped internally.

Mighter Gissing has a relationship withReuters, although it amounts to a combina-tion of competition and partnership.“Mighter Gissing provides alternate contri-butions systems that interoperate withRMDS, Reuters’ data platform,” says aReuters spokesperson. The two companieswork on some projects together, andConteX works on Reuters’ platform. Onother projects they compete for customers.

Mighter Gissing started as GissingConsulting in 1991, a boutique consultancydealing mainly with Reuters’ data. In 1996it began the move towards products withConteX, which was designed to fill a gapleft by the larger data distributors. In 2000Gissing acquired the resale arm of Mighterto improve its sales skills.

Mighter Gissing’s 17 employees service40 clients, including JPMorgan Chase,Merrill Lynch, ABN Amro, and Royal Bankof Scotland. It is investing in more market-ing to promote ConteX and its new prod-ucts: a fixed-income pricing engine, areal-time Excel plug-in, and a product toease the integration of Bloomberg to othersystems. “There is more money now for IT,”says Mike Vieyra, Mighter Gissing’s CEO.“We will ride that and expand.” Liz Mundy

Openlink proved its flexibility in the 1996Sumitomo copper trading crisis. JP Morgan,Openlink’s largest client, was forced toimprove its credit risk exposure softwareafter its involvement. Openlink adapted tomeet the changed requirements by devel-oping the risk management side of its soft-ware. “We were a small company workingwith a giant,” said Coleman Fung, Open-link’s CEO and founder. “We did whateverthey asked.”

This approach was rewarded. Chase hadchosen to use a well-known vendor for itscommodities trading when it bought JPMorgan in 2000. “We thought this was theend,” says Fung. “But JP Morgan showedChase our software, and Chase chose to

migrate to Openlink for commodities.”Openlink now has over 90 installations for50 clients, and 280 employees.

Openlink continues its flexibility as a“technology agnostic”. Fung says: “We arenot religious about which platforms weadopt; we give our customers a choice.”Openlink provides front-office to back-office infrastructure for all asset classes on avariety of platforms. “Our strength is theopenness of our system,” he says. “Othersare too focused – they do one thing well,but that’s it.”

UK mortgage bank Nationwide BuildingSociety chose Openlink in 2000 to replaceits outdated infrastructure. It uses Openlinkfor every capability and market product.“We wanted a system that was robustenough for straight-through processing andflexible enough to grow with the business,”says Kevin Bernbaum, head of treasurycontrol. “With some larger providers thereis a major issue if we want to change some-thing. As we get increasingly confidentwith Openlink we are pushing the frontiersof what it can do and seeking furtherenhancements. It might not be the biggestkid on the block, but it has a very goodproduct.”

Fung founded Openlink in 1992 afterspending five months unsuccesfully seek-ing a single product adequate for all hisneeds at Fuji Capital Markets, a Fuji Banksubsidiary that he co-founded. He saw a gap in the market and set up his owncompany, using his knowledge as a deriva-tives trader at Chemical Bank. “I didn’twant to create just another piece of deriva-tives software, but to make the infrastruc-ture. I started with what I knew and scaledup the business capabilities for multiplemarkets.” Openlink has two franchises:Endur for energy markets and Findur for finance, the same core product withdifferent focuses.

Fung believes banks will increasinglyreplace multiple products with one system.“Technology budgets are chewed up bymaintaining a complicated infrastructure.Consolidating systems gets more mileagefrom the budget.” Openlink claims to havea quiet but effective mentality. “We havenever been about marketing, we do notmake big splashes. We just work with ourcustomers and deliver what they need,”says Fung – a claim backed up by thecompany’s high cross-category score in oursurvey. LM

David Klebba works for Oracle – the grand-daddy of database houses, and in a differentleague to almost every other company inour survey. “Retention is the name of thegame these days,” he says, “so customerservice takes precedence over organicgrowth.” The senior director, financialservices industry, explains that even threeyears ago financial services firms paid toomuch attention to sales, and not enough todata. “This is partly because so many salestools promised so much,” he says.

Oracle has been selling its core databaseproduct to financial services companies fortwo decades and now has some of theworld’s biggest as its clients. Its flagshipproduct, Oracle Financial Services Applica-tion, is a suite of tools for performance andrisk analysis along with the all-importantassessments of customer, product andchannel profitability. Customer relation-ship management is a five-step programmeaccording to the Oracle philosophy. Itstarts with collating data, and ends withactivating sales processes.

Oracle also offers Customer Hub, whichit claims provides a 360-degree view of thecustomer. Core customer informationresides in an operational data store but canthen be accessed at various end points.Klebba points out that many banks thatwant simply to change a customer's addressmight have to go into a dozen or moreback-end systems, whereas with Customer


OpenlinkA technology agnostic

OracleKeeping in touch at all levels

Klebba


Hub such alterations are done just once.Bank of Valletta, Malta’s largest domestic

bank, uses Oracle for its core databases.“We started with version 5 about 12 yearsago,” says executive head of IT VictorDenaro, “and as our confidence grew wescaled up.” He cites the scalability ofOracle’s products as a big benefit, alongwith its stability and flexibility. Bank ofValletta won an award in 2003 for theworld’s best customer relationshipmanagement strategy from the UK’s Insti-tute of Financial Services, and says thatOracle was central to this.

Oracle likes the mid-size banks as clients,and claims it is working hard to create ashrink-wrapped application for smallerbanks, to which more tools can be added asand when the bank needs them. It certainlyisn’t happy merely retaining customers, itwants a bigger share of the banking pie. JT

Orc’s latest offering, Liquidator, acts as anelectronic trader that operates withinclient-defined parameters but withoutfurther human intervention. “It never getstired or thinks it has a boring job,” says the Scandinavian company’s CEO, NilsNilsson.

Orc specializes in market making, tradingand brokerage software across all assetclasses. Its products can do pre-trade analy-sis, execution and risk management butNilsson explains that Orc’s edge is integra-tion. “There are many good risk manage-ment packages out there that are muchbetter than Orc, and some pretty goodexecution tools as well. But we integrate allthese things into one single package.”

This consolidation makes trading aneasier and more efficient process. “We tradein a lot of markets and used to have manydifferent systems,” says Luca Lancellotti,front-office applications manager at Trad-ingLab Bank. “We changed to Orc to makethe system simpler, and it’s much betterthan what we had before.”

Teemu Lahtinen, development managerat Finland’s OKO Bank, reiterates the bene-fits. “We used to have trading systems fromdifferent stock exchanges. Orc allows us to

trade on multiple markets with only onesystem.” This has improved the bank’sclient service, risk management, reportingand internal service from the IT depart-ment. “It also makes our traders’ lives a biteasier,” he says.

Orc’s software is not perfect. “It needs tobe polished,” says Lahtinen. “It stillcontains small bugs.” Orc acknowledgesthere are sometimes programming errors incomplex software but is working with auto-mated testing to minimize bugs. AlthoughOko Bank uses Orc Broker as its main prod-uct, Lahtinen feels it is still geared towardstraders. “Brokers have to be creative to digout the functionalities they need,” he says.

Orc has 145 employees and 161 clientsites worldwide. It made its first foray intoNorth America in the late 1990s but hasfound a very different market across theAtlantic. “In America they want service fortheir money. They don’t see a competitiveadvantage in having what everyone elsehas,” says Nilsson. “In Europe clients preferproducts that have been tested.” Orc solvesthe problem with standardized but flexiblesoftware. It enables clients to add their ownproprietary features through the applica-tion programming interface. LM

The best thing about his job for RichardTanenbaum, Savvysoft’s founder, is seeingpeople benefit from the system he devel-

oped. “I feel like a painter or a musician,”he says. “They don’t want to create some-thing just to have it – they want it to beused, to be enjoyed, to be appreciated.”Savvysoft’s TOPS product provides nearly70 models for pricing and hedging vanillaand OTC derivatives. Since its inception,TOPS has processed a few hundred billiondollars-worth of trades.

Tanenbaum was one of four originalBankers Trust members of the first OTCderivatives desk on Wall Street. By 1993 hewas a one-man consultancy, and hehappened to bump into an ex-colleaguewho, days later, called up asking ifTanenbaum could build him some deriva-tives software. Existing offerings were quite simple models built by academics or consultants who lacked marketplaceexperience.

With a hot product on his hands,Tanenbaum trawled through his Wall Streetcontacts to see if anyone knew of a firmthat might want to buy his system. In 45minutes he had cleared through the list and generated no leads. This was a littlescary. He knew there were people whocould benefit from his product but did notknow how to connect with them. He thencame up with the idea of contactingauditors, who knew of numerous clientsthat needed it. Since those early days,Savvysoft has been sold mostly by word of mouth.

TOPS certainly generates strong vocalpraise. “The support and maintenance iswonderful. We don’t have to have a teamwith high levels of financial engineeringskills,” says Jerome Montpetit, market riskmanager at Export Development Canada (afinancial institution providing insurance,financing, and bonding services). Many ofSavvysoft’s 700 clients approached itbecause they did not want to dedicatesubstantial funds to research. Some othersalready have their own internal systems butwith a complicated interface and only basicfunctionality.

One customer, who uses Savvysoft forpricing and decision support for energyderivatives, acknowledges that “the typesof help Savvysoft can give is unparalleled.The guys on the other end of the phoneseem like they’re members of my ownquantitative team.”

Savvysoft keeps a close eye on the ratio of customers to software developers as it wants to retain that boutique feel,


OrcTireless trader

SavvysoftThe artistry of programming

Tanenbaum


especially for support. “We want the peopleon the phone to be the same people whowrite the programs, not just some guysitting on the end of the phone with a usermanual,” Tanenbaum says.

Savvysoft also provides complementaryproducts, Stars and Turbo Excel. Stars is anintegration system – clients can pluganything they want into it including best-of-breed components and easily introducenew instruments. Turbo Excel, released inJune, speeds up calculations and spread-sheet integration. and claims to eliminatespreadsheet risk.

Savvysoft operates out of one office inNew York. However, it has people on callaround the clock to cater for its interna-tional clients, and actively encouragesthem to take advantage of it. If someonephones from Germany and it is 3am in NewYork, Savvysoft will be there to sort thingsout, and its customers are understandablyvery grateful. There aren’t many artists ormusicians that can offer that level ofsupport. EM

One word crops up time and again whenspeaking to AXA IM’s Odette Cesari:“sophisticated”. The head of structured andalternative product talks about her busi-ness’s needs; about the tools they need;about the complexity of their hedge fundoperations and everything seems to be, well

– appropriately for a Paris-based organiza-tion – sophisticated.

So the Corsican Vinciguerra brothersobviously knew what they were doingwhen in 1985 they named their newcompany Sophis. Hervé, the older of them,was managing a sizeable bond fund at thetime for Financière Meeschaert. With thehelp of his brother, Arnaud, he developedmodels for optimizing positions on theMatif and for pricing a range of equityderivatives and convertibles. By 1992, allthis effort had translated into Risque,which was developed in partnership withCDC and remains Sophis’s core product.

Risque is dedicated to the sell side of theportfolio management world but whenAXA Investment Management came look-ing for a risk management product a coupleof years ago, Sophis worked with it todevelop its new buy-side product, Value.

AXA’s Cesari says: “We had a lot of skillsand investment processes in our team,which was dealing with hedge funds, OTCderivatives, CDOs and the like. We neededa common tool for two things: to industri-alize our fund management processes andto manage risk. It was difficult to find a toolto do this and improve productivity.”

The risk management side of the equa-tion has determined the order in whichAXA IM is rolling out Sophis Value. “Westarted with the hedge funds, then securi-tized products. We’re doing the guaranteedfunds now, and eventually we’ll get to thepassive index trackers,” says Cesari.

Value’s big plus point for AXA IM –beyond its sophistication – is its opennesscombined with level of innovation. Theinstitution can manage hedge funds withautomatic links to the prime brokers. Cesarirefers to one particularly complex hedgefund and explains how they simply pluggedthe underlying model into Value, and awaythey went. Thanks to API, the team is ableto tailor Value to their exact and exactingrequirements in those areas where the out-of-the-box functionality is not enough.

Sophis is keen to promote the riskmanagement side of its focus. “It is reallyour core business,” says CEO HervéVinciguerra. However, it does offer trans-action processing capabilities, and heclaims it could be used as the backbonesystem platform for a financial institutionof any size.

Size of client certainly does not seem tobe a big hurdle for Sophis. A glance down

the list of some of its 70-plus clients throwsup big names like Barclays Capital, HSBC,ING and Royal Bank of Canada as well assome smaller regional operations. Sophis isparticularly strong in the hedge fund sectorand claims to have “some of the mostsophisticated derivatives players in theworld market”.

All in all, the boys from Corsica havedone well. By the end of this year theyexpect to have 170 employees, and Sophishas offices in the world’s biggest financialcentres. Ideal for nights out at sophisticatedrestaurants. JT

Walk along New York City’s Second Avenueand compare the prices at the mango stalls. They will not vary. Block after block,even when it’s $1.75 this week and $1.95 the next, the mangoes are all pricedthe same. But one mango seller doesn’t wake up and walk to the next block eachmorning to check the rate. He’s been doing this day after day for years; he justknows.

The day will come when he hands thebusiness down; but his son has not beenthere each day with him so how can his sonprice the mangoes accurately?

Exotic fruit and exotic options. Tradi-tionally, both can be difficult to price with-out years of experience. So many variablescome into play that market participantsreally need a standard pricing reference


SophisIt’s all in the name

SuperDerivativesPricing confidence

Gershon

Vinciguerra


guide. “Before SuperDerivatives, there wasan art to pricing options,” asserts DavidGershon, CEO. “Now traders have us.”SuperDerivatives shows users the marketprice rather than the theoretical price.Previously, many people didn’t have thetools to price options. “The trader inventedthe excuse of ‘my opinion’. People couldlive with the opinions back then,” saysGershon.

Traders can not only price and hedgeportfolios accurately, they benefit fromsmaller bid-offer spreads. In 1999, knockoutexotic options used to be off 10 to 12 pointson average; today it is closer to five toseven. “It changes the way business is done.It can even help you to decide whether ornot you’re going to trade in the first place –you can find out what the market priceactually is, how much it’s really worth, anddecide to hold or sell,” says Gershon. “Morepeople actually do these sorts of tradestoday because they can.” There’s more trustin the real market price, which means thereis a greater likelihood of deals taking place.

A currency options trader at a globalbank confirms this. “Two years ago, exoticoptions were just 5% to 8% of our business;now they account for 15% to 20%. This ispartly because of SuperDerivatives. It is themost accurate independent option pricingsystem on the market.”

SuperDerivatives claims it is used in overhalf of all banks that trade options – andthat is after just three years in the market. Itis used by large global banks as well as bysmaller institutions. Clients in Indonesiaand Taiwan have purchased the systemspecifically to develop options marketswithin those countries. Erich Loh, a traderat OCBC Singapore, explains how it hashelped him. “Many customers demandedto be able to trade complicated exotics, andnow SuperDerivatives allows us to pricethem. It is very close to market and coun-terparty prices, so we now have a commonreference.”

Volumes have climbed in all options,particularly exotics, since the 2001 launchof SuperDerivatives. Gershon claims it hasrevolutionized the FX option world, andsoon will have pricing for options in otherassets as well. It has just released tools forpricing exchange-traded options in equitiesand interest rates. “Look at that market ayear from now to see what sort of differenceSuperDerivatives makes.”

You cannot accuse Gershon of lacking

ambition. He continues, “We’ve changedthe FX options market, and will change theentire universe of derivatives soon. We’ll belike the Bloomberg of derivatives. Plus ittook Bloomberg 20 years to get to where it is now, and we’ve been operating for only three.”

Maybe it won’t be long beforeSuperDerivatives turns its attention awayfrom the financial markets and into softfruit. The mango man’s son can sleep alittle easier at night. EM

Temenos, Greek for “sacred space”, is aSwiss-based company – with a CEO andchairman hailing from Greece – that hascarved out a lucrative space for itself in thebanking technology market.

It sells two core system products: T24,formerly known as Globus (“I really mustget used to calling it T24,” says one long-time user), and TCB. T24 née Globus wasthe brainchild of five Citibankers who in1990 decided to build the best banking soft-ware possible. They had the brains but notthe entrepreneurial flair to make anymoney from this and, after a few falsestarts, today’s chairman George Koukisbought the product for less than $1million. Today, the company has revenuesof $170 million. Three of the original fiveare still with the company.

Heinz Scheiwiller, deputy CEO atSchroders in Zurich, is pleased with theadded functionality that T24 has given thebank. Schroders’ previous core system wasdiscontinued but Globus was more thanable to meet the bank’s requirements. It isnow piloting T24, which has the addedbenefit that as each close-of-businessprocessing takes place, no other businessesneed to be interrupted.

For Terry Leech, head of IT services at AIBIFS in Dublin, the depth of functionalityand the ability to use it in a multi-entityenvironment, as opposed to just multi-branch, were critical in opting for Globus.“But what swung it for us was the companyethos,” he adds. “They had a very distincthunger back then.”

TCB – Temenos’s newer product – was

initially developed by IBM for a group ofSpanish local savings banks. Temenosbought the software in 2001, partly fromthe proceeds of its IPO in June that year –one of the last tech companies to go publicbefore the markets were all but closed.Temenos retains close ties with IBM,however, as TCB, which is aimed squarelyat retail banks, requires an IBM mainframe.

CEO Andreas Andreades is in no doubt asto Temenos’s future role in the fragmentedmarket. “We see ourselves with a consolida-tor role,” he says. Temenos will have to becareful that such a move does not dilute itsfocus on one core business – somethingthat has stood it in good stead for manyyears. JT

Since 1985, Townsend Analytics’ (TAL) flag-ship product, RealTick, has given usersaccess to real-time market data from avendor of their choice, and can route theirtrades through numerous exchanges andelectronic communication networks(ECNs). Users can manage multiple assetclasses on a single platform.

CAI Cheuvreux, the broking and tradingarm of Crédit Agricole, uses Real Tick toprovide direct market access and executionfor institutional clients worldwide.Malcolm Ford, of CAI Cheuvreux’s market-ing execution services, says: “Although weprimarily trade in equities, our clients wantto be able to trade multiple assets, espe-cially cash and derivatives, through oneterminal. The utopia would be a multi-assetglobal solution, and it looks like RealTick ispushing towards that.”

Rustam Lam, managing director of TALEurope, says: “We wish to level the playingfield by providing tools for all the differenttypes of market participants.” Direct accesscan increase the speed of trade executionand the potential for better pricing byallowing traders to get inside the bid-offerspread. An estimated 30% to 40% of ECNvolume is from active traders using directaccess and this is steadily increasing, largelyas a result of financial software evolution.“Direct market access has been very impor-


TemenosCore business focus

TownsendAnalyticsAccess for all


tant in the US, and is becoming increas-ingly important in Europe,” says Lam.

RealTick v8.0 – the latest upgrade –expands conditional trading rules, andincludes algorithmic trading models thatcan evaluate a security’s trading patternand the trader's aggressiveness and trans-form this into a series of different-sizedorders. This reduces the number of tradi-tional block trades and increases thenumber and array of execution sizes, lead-ing to greater anonymity. Lam points outthat it has been “a natural evolution tomove into algorithmic trading, and it’ssomething that clients want”.

Townsend lays claim to several break-through technological innovations that arenow industry standards. These include thefirst real-time streaming data over the inter-net, the first integrated solution for Nasdaqtrading rooms, and the first Windows-based direct-access trading solution.Townsend also developed the technologybehind Archipelago, one of the four origi-nal ECNs launched in the US in 1997. EM

Yolus is a re-engineered component ofDresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein’s in-houserisk management software. Dresdnerprovided the firm with venture capital andits CEO, became its first customer, andstarted spreading the word in the Allianzgroup. Unsurprisingly, Yolus has taken a

customer-led approach to its business.Yolus provides a consolidated real-time

view of risk. It collects data from differentfront-end systems to provide a normalizedview of risk exposure.

“This is not just another reconciliationsheet,” says Yolus CEO Robert Devayya. “It gets to the essence of risk management –understanding what your traders areactually doing.” It can be used at variouslevels: from the risks being taken byindividual traders to those of an entirebusiness.

Most of Yolus’s clients are members ofthe Allianz family of companies: Allianz,Dresdner Bank, and Dresdner KleinwortWasserstein. Fimat, the brokerage arm ofSociété Générale, isYolus’s first outsideclient.

Alan Dee, finance director at Fimat in theUK, does not see a problem with using aproduct with such strong ties to Dresdner.“Nothing has happened to suggest we are ajunior partner,” he says. “We click ourfingers and they jump.”

Yolus operates a buy-and-build policy.

“We have an out-of-the-box solution thatmeets 60% of the requirements but clientscan extend and customize it to addresswhatever gives the institution a competi-tive advantage,” says Devayya. Yolus worksin short delivery cycles of 30 to 90 daysinstead of 12- to 18-month projects. “Theusers can see progress on their desktops,”says Devayya. “They know at every step ofthe way what they are getting.”

Yolus has an open standards policy,programming in Java. This means that in-house IT departments can enhance theproduct themselves. This has caused someproblems. “One challenge we faced wasscalability,” says Pascal Emile, global headof market risk technology at DresdnerKleinwort Wasserstein. “There are somephysical limitations with Java and we hadto work with Yolus on improving the infra-structure.” It rectified the problem, andDresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is happywith the result. “The Yolus system speededup reporting by two or three timescompared with the old in-house database,”he adds. LM


YolusIn and out of the family

MethodologyThe respondent The survey was sent tosoftware companies’ clients as well as to300 heads of technology at banks world-wide. Each respondent was able to rate upto three software products, includingthose from other vendors, in every applic-able functional category (six categories,and a total of 22 sub-categories therein).Euromoney received 130 verified uniqueclient respondents, generating 437 differ-ent ratings. The survey structure Each software prod-uct was rated on a 10-point scale forservice, usability, return on investment(cost), and application programminginterface (network function), togetherwith an overall rating. Respondents werealso asked for their perceived weighting foreach of these areas. The average weight-ings were used in determining the overallgrade. The scores from these five scalesformed the basis for the overall score.Grades The product grade: each softwareproduct was given a score out of 100.Ninety-five per cent of the score camefrom the individual weighted scale scores,with the remaining 5% derived from the

relative weight of respondent numbers foreach product in each sub-category. The category grade: providers mentionedin a majority of each set of sub-categorieswere rated on all responses within thatcategory and graded. Providersmentioned in a majority of categorieswere rated on all responses and given anoverall grade.The overall grade: the top vendor forservice, usability, ROI/cost, API, and theoverall aggregate was identified on thebasis of all 437 data points. Providersmentioned in a majority of categorieswere rated on all responses and given anoverall grade.

Important noticeThe Euromoney financial software usersurvey is a reference guide to user opiniononly and is not a poll or award. We do notclaim to have surveyed or to represent theentire client universe, nor have we usedthe software ourselves. If, as a user, youhave your own opinions of these softwareproducts we would like to hear them. Youcan find our survey athttp://www.euromoney.com/oscar/takesurvey/en/ftus. Kap Monet

Devayya


IMPORT MARKET DATA/MARKETDATA PROVIDER (CONT.)Sophis: Sophis Risque 79.8

IT Software: Easy Trade 76.8

Misys: Equation 75.1

Bloomberg: Bloomberg Professional 73.05

Reuters: Reuters 3000XTRA 73.0

ORDER MANAGEMENT CAPABILITY

Grade

Sophis: Sophis Value 99.1

Orc Software: Orc Broker 86.3

UBS: FX Trader 84.0

Sophis: Sophis Risque 78.5

GL Trade: OMS 74.9

Reuters: Piranha 74.7

Charles River: Charles River Trader 69.2

Orc Software: Orc Trader 69.0

Imagine: Imagine Trading System 61.3

ORDER/TRADE ENTRYGrade


GL Trade: GLWin 83.4


Cognizant: NexTrader 81.1

Orc Software: Orc Broker 80.9

Reuters: Piranha 77.6

Front Capital Systems: Prime 77.3


UBS: FX Trader 74.9

Deutsche Bank: Autobahn 73.5

Charles River: Charles River Trader 68.0


PRICING ENGINEGrade

Cognotec: AutoDeal Plus 97.0

Savvysoft: TOPS 91.9

Algorithmica Research: Quantlab 86.0

SciComp: SciFinance 84.3


PRICING ENGINE (CONT.)SuperDerivatives: SuperDerivatives 82.1

Citigroup: The Yield Book 81.3

OpenLink: Findur 81.0



Derivatech: Derivatech 67.0

360T: TEX 64.9


RISK MANAGEMENT SUBCATEGORIESANALYTIC CAPABILITIES

Grade

SuperDerivatives: SuperDerivatives 91.5





Front Capital Systems: Prime 40.0

CREDIT RISKGrade

Yolus: Y-RTR 92.5

Calypso: Calypso 85.9


Yolus: Y-ERM 79.9

Application Networks: JRisk 79.5


International Financial Systems: Bankware 71.9


Lombard Risk Systems: Oberon 57.4


TRADING/DEALING OVERALLGrade

SuperDerivatives 83.0

Sophis 81.7

Orc Software 77.5

Bloomberg 70.9

GL Trade 70.3

Imagine 64.2

Reuters 63.1

RISK MANAGEMENT OVERALLGrade

Algorithmica Research 96.2

Yolus 92.2


Savvysoft 86.31

Application Networks 85.8

Sophis 78.8

TRADING/DEALING SUBCATEGORIES

INTER-DEALER TRADING NETWORKS

Grade

Mighter Gissing: ConteX 89.1


eSpeed: eSpeed 81.0

Bloomberg: Tradebook 79.6

GL Trade: GLNet 79.3

Deutsche Bank: Autobahn 75.0

Euro MTS: MTS 73.6

UBS: FX Trader 73.1


EBS: EBS dealing 68.8

IMPORT MARKET DATA/MARKETDATA PROVIDER

Grade


Townsend Analytics: RealTick 93.8

Cognotec: Market Rate Manager 91.2


Intarget: Inbroker 88.3



SwapsMonitor.com: FinancialCalendar.Com 83.2

Mighter Gissing: ConteX 83.1

Moneyline: Active 8 82.2



Temenos: Globus 80.8

COMPLETE RESULTSOVERALL CROSS-CATEGORY

Grade


Townsend Analytics 90.4

OpenLink 88.1

DST 86.2

Sophis 82.1

Temenos 74.3

OVERALL CRITERIAAPI

Grade


ROI/COST EFFICIENCYGrade

Savvysoft 97.1

USABILITYGrade

Yolus 95.0

SERVICEGrade

Savvysoft 98.8

If you would like to add your opinion to our results then please fill inour user survey which can be found at:http://www.euromoney.com/oscar/takesurvey/en/ftus

FX AND INTEREST RATE RISKGrade


Yolus: Y-RTR 93.8



Application Networks: JRisk 85.9




MARKET RISKGrade

Yolus: Y-RTR 95.5


Numerix: Numerix 89.4

Financial CAD: Fincad 87.5



Lombard Risk Systems: Oberon 85.7


Sungard Trading and Risk Systems: Opus 82.4


DST: HiRisk 76.2

Murex: MXG2001 66.9



PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT OVBRALLSUBCATEGORIES

DECISION SUPPORTGrade




RBC: Portfolio Analytics 92.7

DST: HiInvest 90.0

Yolus: Y-RTR 88.3




DST: HiPortfolio 80.8

CASH POSITIONINGGrade




CashTech Solutions: CashIn 74.7

RECONCILIATIONGrade


WM-data: Twin 81.9


CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS OVERALLSUBCATEGORIES

CLIENT REPORTINGGrade

DST: HiBPM 94.4

SPSS: Clementine 81.3

Business Objects: Business Objects 79.4

CRMGrade

DST: HiBPM 83.8

LIMIT CHECKINGGrade



Yolus: Y-ERM 81.4


Misys: Equation 58.7


BUSINESS INTEGRATIONGrade

Oracle: Oracle Database 87.4


Sybase: Sybase SQL Anywhere 74.7

Microsoft: Microsoft SQL Server 73.8

Pervasive Software: Pervasive SQL Server 69.0

SECURITIES PROCESSINGGrade





PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENTOVERALL

Grade



Savvysoft 91.1

Yolus 86.0

DST 84.9

Sophis 82.4

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPSOVERALL

Grade

DST 87.3

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTGrade




DST: HiPerformance 92.1

RBC: Portfolio Analytics 92.0


Yolus: Y-RTR 80.2


IDS: Caliper 65.2


OPERATIONS SUBCATEGORIESACCOUNTING

Grade




REGULATORY REPORTINGGrade

STB Systems: STB Superconsolidator 92.3

STB Systems: STB Reporter 90.6

TRANSACTION MANAGEMENTGrade

DST: HiBPM 89.9

DST: Open Messenger 87.0


Omgeo: MarketMatch 82.7


Intarget: Inbroker 81.1

Omgeo: Oasys Global 81.1

XKO: Diameter 81.0


International Financial Systems: Bankware 76.7

Omgeo: Automatch 75.4


SWIFT: SWIFT Alliance 69.7


Aperts Software: Aperta VDPS 58.5

Misys: Bankmaster 55.8

CASH MANAGEMENT SUBCATEGORIESCASHFLOW FORECASTING

Grade



CASH MANAGEMENTOVERALL

Grade

Sophis 82.2

CashTech Solutions 67.1

OPERATIONS OVERALLGrade

DST 84.7

Sophis 77.7


Our suite of TOPS modeling applications is hardly thecheapest, but it won hands down for ROI (Return onInvestment) and Cost Efficiency. And we aren’t thebiggest company, but for Service and Support ourcustomers rated us number one.

How come? For one thing, we’re not just software people.Our president is a leading pioneer of the OTC derivatives business. So we havethe know-how, we speak your language, and our solutions reflect this depth ofunderstanding. Which is why Savvysoft also came in #1 in Interest Rates and FX.You see, Savvysoft continually upgrades its products to handle the latest derivativesstructures. And our support people don’t just “know” the software, they createit. Which means you get people who really can help you, and fast.

Savvysoft products include TOPS for analytics, risk management and more. STARSfor enterprise-level portfolio management. And now TurboExcel for running Excelspreadsheets up to 300 times faster. (Honest.) To learn more, please call us at 1-212-742-8677, send email to [email protected] or visit savvysoft.com.

A N A LY T I C S > R I S K M A N A G E M E N T & T R A D I N G S Y S T E M S > C R E D I T D AT A

FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY USERS’ SURVEY 2004

Savvysoft#1 FOR ROI

#1 FOR SUPPORT

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