Woodbine Associates (http://www.woodbineassociates.com), the capital markets consulting and research firm, announces the release of its latest report, “Collateral Management and Vendor Systems.” The report examines the business and operational challenges introduced by central clearing of OTC derivatives and increased margin requirements and evaluates the capabilities of the nine leading vendor collateral management systems.
The report is intended to give firms a basis to evaluate their current capabilities and provide a framework for the selection of collateral management systems.
“Central clearing, initial margin requirements and the cost of collateral will force many firms to significantly upgrade their systems,” said Sean Owens, director of Fixed Income and author of the report. “Users need a flexible, automated workflow that centralizes collateral management for all traded products and securities. They also need enhanced analytics, forecasting and inventory management. Under the new regulations collateral and margin will play key roles in OTC derivative transactions, including pricing, counterparty, product, venue and CCP selection. Systems will have to seamlessly integrate collateral management with risk management, funding and trading.”
The report looks beyond core processing to include elements of risk, liquidity, trading and funding that will be more deeply entwined with the management of collateral and margin. Cleared OTC derivatives, bilateral margin requirements and new liquidity standards will require firms to actively manage collateral across the organization on a more integrated and timely basis. To be effective, many firms will turn to third-party vendor solutions to upgrade their capabilities. This report provides a comprehensive and independent analysis of those options.
Key Points:
• Firms will need enhanced capabilities to process, finance and allocate collateral to minimize the costs associated with restrictive CCP and counterparty margin requirements.
• Seamless integration of collateral management with risk, liquidity and trading functions is essential. Failure to do so will impact the bottom line.
• Many vendor systems offer near-complete automation for internal post-trade processing.
• Vendor system capabilities and functionality vary considerably, particularly in areas beyond core processing. Analytics, forecasting, scenario analysis, collateral prioritization and optimization and limits monitoring are meaningful differentiators.
This report provides strategic as well as tactical insights to firms active in trading and managing collateral for OTC and listed derivatives and other products and securities.
Vendor systems reviewed include: 4sight Xpose, IBM Algorithmics Collateral Operations, IntegriDATA CAARS, Lombard Colline, Misys Enterprise Collateral, Murex MX Collateral, Omgeo ProtoColl, OpenLink Financial (Findur) and SunGard Apex Collateral. The report contains 82 pages with 16 figures and tables.