riskart S.p.A., a leading specialist consultancy in bespoke solutions for Back Office administration of OTC derivatives, has announced the appointment of Dragons’ Desk as its distributor in the Asia Pacific region. Dragons’ Desk is a leading financial technology firm with offices in Hong Kong and Japan helping diverse financial institutions implement superior technology solutions and best of breed investment practices
“The Asia financial market is becoming increasingly sophisticated with a growing use of derivative contracts,” explains Franco Marinotti, riskart’s ceo. “Hong Kong in particular, is a thriving financial centre and an important gateway to the Chinese market where derivatives are becoming more popular and better regulated but these derivative contracts need to be managed properly, which is our speciality. We have been searching for a while to find a company to work with in the Asia Pacific region that shares our passion for providing the best solutions for customers.”
David Androsoni, managing director at Dragons’ Desk, adds, “riskart’s software is a perfect addition to our range of financial technology solutions. It covers the often forgotten but vitally important Back Office function of managing derivatives contracts to reconcile the daily position and meet compliance requirements. Often banks and asset management companies start out trying to manage contracts on a manual basis using spreadsheets and open source tools but, as the number of contracts grow, this can rapidly become unmanageable requiring an automated process such as provided by riskart.
“We have identified a gap in the Asian market that is perfectly met by riskart’s specialisation in OTC derivatives management. An investment bank’s competitive edge often lies in being able to create tailored derivative instruments that are designed to meet the exact risk exposure of their clients. This non-standardisation usually makes it hard for firms to fit them into an automated process so that Back Office technology suppliers usually take many months to adjust their software to handle new OTC derivatives. However, the riskart software has been properly developed from the ground up so that new contract types can be added within one or two days either by the customer or by riskart’s support team of financial experts. The riskart Derivatives Management Suite provides a solid technology platform for Back Office derivatives management that evolves and adapts to match the ever changing client and market requirements.”
