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Charles River Development, a leading provider of financial software and consulting services to the global investment management, banking, pension and insurance industries, today announced that BT Financial Group (BT), has expanded its use of the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) to include fixed interest and money market trading and compliance. Charles River IMS is an integrated, front and middle office suite for portfolio management (Charles River Manager), order management (Charles River Trader), and real-time compliance (Charles River Compliance).
BT Financial Group, a Charles River client since 2000, and Sagitta Rothschild were purchased by Westpac Banking Corporation, Australia’s first bank, in 2002. The combined entity is now conducting all of its Australian fixed interest and money market order management and compliance functions through Charles River IMS. Previously, the firm was using the system to conduct portfolio-level compliance monitoring and reporting across its domestic fund range.
“Charles River IMS has enabled us to gain efficiencies in our fixed income and money market trade processing, as well as compliance operations, for all domestic asset classes from three heritage business units and two back-office systems into one centralized solution,” said Debbie Alliston, chief operating officer at BT. “By integrating and centralizing our operations on the Charles River IMS platform, we’ve implemented a consistent management approach across BT Financial Group while providing a robust and transparent control environment.”
“BT was our first customer in the Asia-Pacific region and has been a true partner in helping us map and implement product features and functionality suited to the needs and demands of the Asian-Pacific investment management market,” said Cameron Field, Charles River’s Asian-Pacific managing director. “For example, BT and Charles River worked together to write and introduce the interfunding specification which allows investment managers to ‘drill-down’ through the multiple layers of fund of fund portfolios to manage and control compliance restrictions and exposure on a ‘look-through’ basis. This has been a significant development in the Australian investment community in the last year.”
BT trades global assets including variable rate notes, corporate bonds, Australian Commonwealth Government bonds and all money market transactions through the Charles River order management and compliance system. Charles River IMS’ seamless connectivity capabilities also enable BT to electronically distribute broker confirmations and send trades automatically to its two back offices. Charles River IMS supports all global security types including equities, options, fixed income, forwards, FX, currencies, and futures including Australian Bond futures.