Sep 28th, 2009, Hong Kong
Hong Kong - Bank of East Asia (BEA) plans to go live with the FinIQ Structured Products System in Hong Kong by year-end, to augment its treasury business, say vendor officials.
The system, which has been in testing since April, will increase the automation and processing efficiency for foreign exchange and interest rate structured products, covering valuation and pricing, deal booking, customer credit tracking and post-trade processing. "To start with, this will mostly focus on FX option-linked multi-leg transactions such as target redemptions, par forwards and accumulator forwards," said Milind Kulkarni, chief executive at FinIQ Group in Mumbai.
The FinIQ System will serve as an interface for integration with BEA's various core systems, including risk management, settlement and accounting. Previously, the processes were mainly done manually.
Vendor officials said the software was selected over competitors' due to its new product-creation engine. "Everything's not hard-coded into our product, so we can create new FX structured products relatively easily on the fly," said John Atkinson, managing director at FinIQ for UK and Europe based in London.
Atkinson started at the company on September 21 to expand the vendor's business outside of Asia. New full-time offices were opened in London and Zurich this month. Atkinson has spent the past 18 years working in Asia and the Middle East, and was previously the managing director, Asia, for Reed Elsevier, which owns LexisNexis. He was also formerly managing director of Reuters' Southeast Asia office, where he was responsible for the company's business and operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Atkinson said low deposit rates are increasing interest in yield-enhancement products. "Certainly, the small- to medium-sized banks have not invested in that technology to date," he added.
Source: FX Week