Omgeo, the global standard for post-trade efficiency, has made functionality improvements to the settlement notification feature of its core central matching platform, Omgeo Central Trade Manager (Omgeo CTM).
The system now provides the ability to send a copy of a settlement notification to multiple third parties for informational purposes, in addition to the custodian notification for settlement. Investment managers can send SWIFT MT541/543 messages to up to 15 third parties such as their underlying client, fund administrators, outsourcers or valuation agents.
Over the past few years, Omgeo CTM has experienced certain expansion, in particular with regards to client adoption and volume growth. Omgeo CTM volumes have increased 256% since January 2006 and the community of clients using the application has increased nearly 27% since the beginning of this year. Additionally, the number of clients using the settlement notification functionality within Omgeo CTM has increased over 20% since the beginning of 2008 and settlement notification volume has increased 14% for the same time period.
Typically, investment managers use spreadsheets or other proprietary systems to notify their third parties of the details of a trade, which can include information such as security type, settlement currency and account details. This process can be extremely time consuming, error prone and manual in nature. The enhancement to Omgeo CTM will greatly reduce the time clients spend on producing and sending out notifications and will lower or eliminate the expense of additional proprietary interfaces needed to deliver this information.
This functionality is particularly relevant in markets where third party agents are an integral part of the trade lifecycle. It is also pertinent in the Japanese market, where copies of notifications need to be sent to Japanese trust banks. Other examples of third parties used across the world are subagents, trustees, fund accountants and legal departments.
Clients can notify up to 15 third parties on SWIFT simultaneously once the trade becomes matched. Third parties must be capable of receiving SWIFT messages, and have a published SWIFT Bank Identifier Code (BIC), but need not be an Omgeo client.
“This new functionality is critical for our client community to interact more efficiently with all the parties to their trades,” says Steve Matthews, managing director, product at Omgeo. “As the trading process becomes more complex, and the number of institutions involved increases, we are delighted to deliver functionality that helps our clients keep pace with this evolving environment.”
Different formats and transport methods (other than SWIFT messaging) will be available later in the year to accommodate non-SWIFT enabled third parties, along with the ability to send notifications before the trade has been matched.