As previously revealed by Reference Data Review back in August, after 16 months of development, post-trade solution vendor Information Mosaic has finally launched a new asset surveillance solution aimed at providing a consolidated view of network and depository counterparty risk through a single user interface. The vendor has been pilot testing the solution with two of its clients over the last few months in order to develop the required set of risk diagnostics tools, according to Manmohan Singh, head of product leadership at the vendor and country head of its Indian operations.
Singh, who joined back in October last year from Tata Consultancy Services, indicates that the vendor began development work in earnest in June last year using the “fail fast” development approach, where the vendor quickly developed a prototype and presented it to some of its clients and then refined the offering gradually. The resulting functionality is aimed at providing clients with top down transparency across their entire custody and depository network via risk visualisation and presentation tools. The solution is therefore focused on presenting more data to custodians on the location of their assets and those of their clients for risk evaluation purposes.
Risk is automatically assessed and flagged against custom set parameters providing an up to the minute snapshot of exposure, while the risk simulation feature allows for ‘what if’ analysis, according to the vendor. The focus of development has been on ensuring the solution can be integrated into a wide range of solutions and providing a browser-based user interface for ease of accessibility. There has also been some emphasis on customisability and users are able to opt for proactive alerts via SMS and email from the system
John Byrne, CEO at the vendor, reckons the solution could allow firms to avoid the same challenges they faced when attempting to assess their exposure to Lehman when it collapsed. “Our Asset Surveillance solution gives the real-time view of network counterparty risk that ensures this sort of confusion could never happen again. Custodians have a unique opportunity to be the white knights of risk in this scenario, providing a definitive picture of where they and their investors stand on assets under custody,” he says.
Other features of Information Mosaic’s Asset Surveillance solution include extensive search and sort functionality on portfolio views, enabling a client, portfolio or individual trade and position level perspective. Singh reckons the solution is a first for the market, as there are no other vendors out there offering the same set of functionality.
There are, however, a whole host of risk analytics solutions on the market that have focused on providing a more intuitive and visual interface to users. At last month’s A-Team Insight Exchange event, for example, Peter Simpson, senior vice president of research and development at Panopticon, elaborated on his firm’s partnership with Sybase to this end. “Immediate delivery of data doesn’t mean anything unless that data can be analysed quickly and decisions can be made in a timely manner,” contended Simpson.
As well as the new asset surveillance solution, Information Mosaic has also been working on its flagship corporate actions solution, cama, over the last two years in order to move from providing a user interface to providing a user “experience”, says Singh.
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