For more information about Luxoft, visit www.luxoft.com www.luxoft.com/financial-services/
case study 13.09.2012
Equity Swaps Management Application Summary Develop an application for portfolio management of equity swap and total return swap (TRS) derivatives to support the bank’s prime brokerage services.
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Client: A top ten global investment bank Business Area: Prime Services, Front Office Asset Classes: Equity Derivatives Technology Set: IBM WebSphere, Oracle, Java/J2EE: EJB, Spring, Hibernate, SOAP, .NET Framework: WinForms, WPF, Web Services Integration: Reuters and over 40 Bank applications, including trades, allocations, clients and rates data sources User Profile: Traders, Account managers (100+ users) Geography: UK, US Services Provided: Business analysis, Development, Maintenance Team Size: 10+ team members Duration: 5+ years development and maintenance
Business Challenge Prime brokerage services were part of the bank’s strategic development plan that required capabilities to manage swap contracts in the portfolio. The high-level business requirements included: uu Automate the workflow for trade booking, approval and block trade allocations to support the new strategic business model uu Automated daily maintenance for contract expiration, margins, interest calculation and changes in value uu Automated tracking of the client trading operations uu Automated calculation of all cash flows associated with trading activities, such as the interest, notional fees, and dividends related to the contracts uu Integration into existing data flows and applications uu Data migration includes back-dated changes to the trades, prices, and fees, as well as recalculation of the positions and cash flows uu Decommission the legacy platform
Luxoft Delivered Solution The bank’s IT department needed a vendor with a background in the equity derivatives domain and a proven record of accomplishment in system design and development. Luxoft was selected as the vendor to extend the bank’s IT team, providing expertise in both the business and technology domains. The biggest challenges were in designing a system and developing a rollout plan to aggregate dozens of data feeds and to migrate and recalculate a large volume of existing data without affecting the day-to-day business of the bank. The system integrated the data flows from dozens of upstream applications that contained the source data for pricing, clients, trades and allocations information. More dozens of data flows had to be integrated with the downstream applications used for risk management, reporting, confirmations, and reconciliations. These integrations required a considerable number of recalculations on a large volume of data, risking the level of service requirements for system performance and availability. To mitigate these risks, Luxoft initiated performance improvements for database optimization, memory usage reduction, and transaction and error handling.
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The equity swaps management application is the primary front-office component for numerous applications that support different phases of the equity swaps lifecycle. The technical solution is a complex information system with a multi-tiered, client-server architecture to support a high volume of operational data while maintaining performance and stability level-of-service requirements. Luxoft successfully delivered this robust technical solution on time and within the budget.
Figure 1: Equity Swaps Management System Architecture
REPORTS (NAS STORAGE)
ORACLE 9.2 (LINUX)
OUTCOMING DATA FLOWS .NET CLIENTS (WINDOWS XP)
WEB SPHERE CORE SERVER (LINUX)
RETURES PRICES
.NET DELTA CALCULATION ENGINE (WINDOWS SERVER)
INTEREST & EXCHANGE RATES OTHER INCOMING DATA FLOWS
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Benefits Luxoft’s solution provided the bank’s prime brokerage services with the following benefits: uu Increased opportunities for higher returns and lower costs in the bank’s prime brokerage service uu Supports the strategic business plan to improve the bank’s competitive position uu Improve management performance and operational coordination through integration of the bank’s source data
Customer Feedback “And thanks once again for the tremendous effort you’ve put in over the last two weeks and continue to put in. This neither goes unnoticed or forgotten.” - Bank IT Project Manager “Thanks for all your helpful and insightful input, as ever.” - Bank Business Analyst
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About luxoft
Luxoft, a principal subsidiary of IBS Group, is a provider of advanced application and software engineering outsourcing services for global and regional enterprises. Luxoft builds partnerships with its clients, such as Boeing, IBM, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Harman, Avaya, Alstom, and Sabre, based on the culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and deep domain expertise. Luxoft offers international delivery capability through its network of state-of-the-art delivery centers in North America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Luxoft`s customers benefit from the right mix of technology skills, industry knowledge, proprietary processes and methodologies, and a choice of engagement models. For more information about Luxoft, visit www.luxoft.com www.luxoft.com/financial-services/
Š 2012 Luxoft