HVB Americas

Trading Performance and Operational Risk Monitor

The New York branch of the second-largest bank in Germany, HVB Americas provides corporate and institutional customers with capital markets and treasury products. This includes foreign exchange spot deals, forwards, swaps, bonds, interest rate derivatives, and loan facilities as well as related cash and treasury management products.

Customer Challenges

Control and lower processing costs and operational risks.
Operate in a loosely-coupled environment, eliminating reliance on existing EAI platform for purposes of audit independence and operational resilience.
Improve ability to respond to audit and compliance requirements.
Manage the entire trading life cycle process across all systems, regardless of their platform integration.
Understand trade process cycle times and alert when SLA is breached.

Solution

Using Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (formerly SeeBeyond[tm] ICAN Suite) helped HVB Americas improve its control over high value and high complexity transactions by providing dashboard-based monitoring capability for traders and operations staff. With end-to-end flow monitoring and alerts, the solution delivers complete event history across all operational and record-keeping systems. A user-extensible trade event engine models and manages any trade state or product type.

Business Results

Enhanced data quality via real-time reconciliation
Improved transaction control, minimizing operational risk and financial exposure
Full trade management metrics, including process status, channel profitability, and performance, as well as cycle time metrics
Comprehensive audit and compliance capability

Products and Services

Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS)
Sun Enterprise Service Bus
Sun Business Process Manager
Sun SeeBeyond eWay Intelligent Adapters
Sun Composite Page Designer
Sun Professional Services

Story Details

HVB Americas has had a successful implementation of Java CAPS as the basis for an STP framework, but they needed the ability to manage and monitor trade processing from inception (order capture and deal execution) through to payment and settlement. The STP infrastructure covered some, but not all, of the trade life cycle automation process.

The cost-effective Sun Transaction Control Monitor (TCM) for Foreign Exchange enables monitoring and management of all foreign exchange deals for HVB Americas, showing trading and operations staff a precise picture of transaction activity. Sun Professional Services and the Center of Excellence team managed and implemented the deployment in a short, five-week time period, utilizing a prebuilt dashboard and transaction list screen templates, as well as predefined business processes and workflow models that are part of the Java CAPS solution.

" Trade life cycle management is a critical control element of any transaction processing environment. The Transaction Control Monitor solution eliminates the need for end-of-day reconciliation, which has not just a cost benefit, but also a data quality benefit. In addition to real-time reconciliation, this solution offers the opportunity to move to real-time, intra-day cash balance management. Improved cash balance management has a direct impact on our funding costs, and therefore our profitability. "

— David Dart, Managing Director and CIO, HVB Americas

Java CAPS provides real-time visibility and reconciliation. It successfully links and enables all aspects of bank treasury and capital markets operation by:

Processing and storing transactional data in a variety of different systems or formats across business lines and channels.
Enable functionality among multichannel delivery system functions between end-user or customer touch points and its back-office settlement systems.
Obtain a single, comprehensive view of all business processes and any status change within the process.

In addition, HVB Americas sought a utility that could:

Manage the entire life cycle from trade execution and deal capture to limits check and trade booking, from trade confirmation and matching to payment, settlement, and accounting.
Operate in a loosely coupled environment that is not reliant on the existing EAI platform for audit independence and operational resilience.
Alert traders and operations staff on a proactive basis of performance SLA breaks and pending failures.

Sun SeeBeyond delivered a "rapid time to value" solution, which the customer was able to use very quickly. Built on top of the Java CAPS platform, the TCM leverages native integration and business process management (BPM) capabilities, combining them with a predefined composite business solution that directly addresses the needs of the treasure and capital markets industry. Through the application of the “four eyes” principal, HVB Americas now has a complete view of all events that occur during the life of a foreign exchange deal.