Pressures in the post-trade environment are mounting
As firms are forced to further reduce costs, the level of tolerance for post-trade processing inefficiencies is in rapid decline, with all trading activities being scrutinised and automation on the rise. These factors, combined with regulators increasingly concentrating their efforts on de-risking and further regulating the post-trade environment, are generating a wealth of challenges for market participants.
As firms plan strategically for this post-trade evolution, an upcoming development that combines many of these pressures is the move to harmonise standard settlement periods to T+2 for European Union regulated markets.
For many firms, achieving T+2 requires a major overhaul of existing processes to enable trade affirmation, allocation and confirmation to take place, where possible, on the trade date and pre-settlement and matching on T+1.
Longer-term, these shortened timeframes are likely to result in fewer trades being settled by batch processing, in favour of more frequent, earlier, real-time settlements as firms seek to enhance efficiencies.
Providing exceptional business level insight, Velocimetrics enables firms to gain an
independent, transparent and detailed view of the business impact of all activities taking place across each and every system and network throughout the post-trade environment as they are happening.
By rapidly detecting potential risks, identifying inefficiencies and exposure to financial loss, Velocimetrics instantly alerts the business to issues that could adversely impact success, as a situation is emerging, before it’s too late!
To control and manage these risks effectively,
market participants will require detailed oversight of their current position at all times. Benefiting from an understanding of which trades are going through the post-trade process, if any are taking longer than expected in particular stages and if so why, the timely identification and resolution of errors will be possible. This reduces the risk of trades not completing on time.
In this faster moving environment, there will be limited scope for error, if firms are to avoid a rise in settlement failures and their associated fees and reputational risk.
The screen shot above demonstrates how Velocimetrics can monitor a flow and alert users if trades are taking an unacceptable amount of time to transit across a system. Details of the status of each system and the trades traversing them are also highlighted; this enables problems to be quickly detected, facilitating their swift resolution.
Velocimetrics for
Post-Trade Processing
Gain Complete Transparency
Velocimetrics understands that post-trade processing environments can be highly complex, and monitoring using more traditional methods such as on a system-by-system basis, or just on the network, can create blind spots.
Velocimetrics takes a different approach, by delivering 100% visibility across the entire environment. Velocimetrics achieves this by collecting data in real-time using multiple sources and techniques, tailored to meet the specific requirements of individual clients.
Velocimetrics’ monitoring capabilities include, but are far from limited to:
• Monitoring batch files as they arrive at
landing sites, e.g. via FTP, including the items within the batch
• Monitoring messages as they traverse
middleware queues
• Conducting non-intrusive network data
capture
• Embedding application agents that capture
data from within, providing the highest level of insight
This comprehensive approach enables users to truly understand all processes taking place, which trades are traversing their environment and what performance levels are being achieved, ultimately providing visibility into areas where users would otherwise be blind.
Identify System Degradation Before Stability Is Impacted
As post-trade processing speeds increase, the swift identification and management of issues that might impact system stability will become essential.
Velocimetrics accurately measures the hop-by-hop latency from the moment of trade capture through the multiple processes involved, before successful settlement is achieved. In doing so, Velocimetrics enables firms to understand their performance in real-time and raises alerts as soon as degradation starts to occur across any
monitored system or network.
Users can then rapidly pinpoint the source of any delay, aiding the swift elimination of issues, which, left unmanaged could affect system stability.
Real-Time Alerting to Prevent Issue
Emergence
Velocimetrics can alert users to a wide range of developing situations, based on their individual needs. For example, as Velocimetrics is business focused it is able to view the settlement requirements of each individual trade.
With this intelligence, Velocimetrics can then alert users if a trade should have reached a certain stage in the process, but is instead held up within a particular application.
Alerts can also be raised if a trade is approaching its intended settlement date and has not yet completed the settlement process.
Velocimetrics also allows users to be alerted if a trade has gone missing somewhere in the process, without the need for detailed investigations on a system-by-system basis. Armed with this insight, users can then quickly and effectively manage the issue and reduce the risk of settlement failure.
Quickly Detect the Exact Location of
Any Given Trade
Velocimetrics traces each and every trade in real-time, even in complicated environments where a trade may take multiple routes, as is common in post-trade processing.
In doing so, Velocimetrics enables users to understand their current position in real-time, on a trade-by-trade basis, providing insight
including:
• The trades currently moving through the
post-trade environment
• The trades that have completed • The trades still in transit
• The progress each trade has made
This increased level of awareness enables users to instantly identify the exact location and
performance of any individual trade traversing their environment, significantly reducing the risk of lost or failed trades.
This functionality can present significant cost and resource savings as it negates the need to trawl through log files or the manual querying of databases to locate missing trades.
Monitor Trade Activity Even Across Highly Complex Environments
Velocimetrics excels in monitoring and analysing information across highly complex environments.
Velocimetrics has been designed to be a highly flexible and extensible solution, which enables the data captured to be enriched with additional information with no performance impact, creating a solution that can effectively meet individual client needs.
Velocimetrics is able to monitor a trade as it moves through the various post-trade processes, even when no common ID is present end-to-end. In these situations, Velocimetrics is able to tag each trade with a synthetic ID when it is first captured. Users can then search using this ID and gain a consolidated view of the path being taken by any particular trade.
Cost-Effective, High Volume, Real-time Monitoring and Analysis
The Velocimetrics architecture has been designed to enable the effective monitoring and analysis of multiple processes concurrently, even in high volume situations and even when data is received out-of-order.
Velocimetrics’ distributed architecture can collect data from multiple geographically
dispersed application systems using cost-effective capture agents. Correlation and data analysis services are then clustered to provide high scalability. This enables firms to instantly analyse data, even across complex flows, supporting firms as their capacity requirements evolve.
Analyse the Data that Matters to You
Velocimetrics enables users to monitor performance based on the data they wish to collate, and slice and dice it to provide a rich array of analytics. For example, Velocimetrics will enable users to customise the data they wish to analyse, using metrics including, but not limited to, the trades allocated to particular clients, by instrument or by settlement date or notional value.
Velocimetrics for
Post-Trade Processing
An Example of How Velocimetrics Can Monitor a Complex Post-Trade Environment This diagram provides an example of just some of the many points at which Velocimetrics could monitor a complex post-trade environment. The potential monitoring points are depicted by the blue Velocimetrics symbol; the green symbols are those monitoring points that were selected for further analysis in the screen shot on the first page.
Test the Performance of New
Technologies
The drive to reduce post-trade costs and risk is leading to numerous technology upgrades. Ensuring that the performance of new technologies meet, or indeed exceed, their predecessor will prove essential in meeting on-going requirements. Velocimetrics enables users to compare the performance of new technology to pre-recorded historical statistics, and can be used both within the pre-production and production environments.
Real-Time Reporting Configured to Meet Business Needs
Velocimetrics enables users to achieve intra-day, real-time reports that can be configured to meet the needs of different business areas. Statistics can be generated to demonstrate latency levels in real-time or how the performance of a particular link is being impacted.
Maximise the Benefit of Future Investment
Velocimetrics enables users to generate reports against historical averages across all elements of their infrastructure, thus helping identify periods of overload or, conversely, underutilisation.
Armed with this insight, users can make adjustments and focus future investment more strategically to effectively manage capacity
Velocimetrics:
Monitor. Analyse. Improve
Velocimetrics delivers exceptional, real-time business insight to the global financial community. Designed by industry specialists, with extensive technical expertise,
Velocimetrics offers users:
• Detailed, independent business level
insight
• Complete transparency over complex
environments
• Highly customisable, client focused
solutions
• Real-time correlation and reporting
• Quick, simple and future-proof
configuration
• A flexible and cost-effective solution across geographically dispersed environments
• Scalability to support business growth
• Suitability for multiple asset classes
• APIs, protocol and software development
kits (SDKs) offering additional decoding, capture and integration capabilities
For Further Information Contact:
London: +44 (0)203 102 7650 / New York: + 1 212 551 1720
Email: [email protected]
www.velocimetrics.com
Velocimetrics:
Trusted by Clients Globally
Velocimetrics is trusted by firms globally to provide business users with the level of transparency required to achieve confidence in their performance.
Velocimetrics is currently being used by:
• Global investment banks
• Regional banks
• Prime brokers
• Exchanges
• Spread betting companies
In addition to being explored by leading financial data and extranet providers, and hedge funds.
Velocimetrics is an independent company, headquartered in London.
