Broadridge Financial Announces Synergy with TwoFour Systems to Offer Solutions for FX

New York based provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally, Broadridge Financial Solutions, has today announced that together with TwoFour Systems LLC, a set of solutions will be offered encompassing front-to-back-office needs for providing treasury based instruments such as Foreign Exchange.

As per the announcement, TwoFour Systems, a designer of scalable and flexible workflow-based transaction processing software for FX, treasury and cash management businesses within the financial services industry, together with Broadridge Financial, will provide a complete solution for treasury-based instruments, combining the strengths of Broadridge’s global multi-asset post-trade solution and TwoFour’s leading cross-product solution for orders, trading, front-office position keeping and treasury risk assessment.

According to the official press release, the combination allows clients to Leverage Leverage In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders In financial trading, leverage is a loan supplied by a broker, which facilitates a trader in being able to control a relatively large amount of money with a significantly lesser initial investment. Leverage therefore allows traders to make a much greater return on investment compared to trading without any leverage. Traders seek to make a profit from movements in financial markets, such as stocks and currencies.Trading without any leverage would greatly diminish the potential rewards, so traders Read this Term capabilities for front-office, middle-office, and back-office treasury solutions, while enabling consolidation of their post-trade data across assets.

Strategic Partnerships a form of Synthetic Innovation

As the financial services industry faces an imperative to renew certain legacy systems, or outdated solutions, and thus improve operational efficiencies, this need is especially critical in the FX and money markets area as regulatory mandates reshape the landscape for clearing, reporting and operational controls, as was highlighted in the official press release.

As per the announcement, TwoFour and Broadridge together are aiming to help financial institutions meet these challenges with their combined focus on aspects of functionality, market asset-class reach, technology and operations efficiencies.

David Campbell, Head of Strategy, Securities Processing Solutions International, Broadridge, said in the official announcement, “The collaboration between TwoFour and Broadridge offers our mutual clients the ability to benefit from a superior, highly efficient treasury capability with seamless process throughput; integrated with post-trade processing and operational control for other asset classes offered via Broadridge’s global, multi-asset platform. This collaboration is a natural fit based on our shared focus to provide the highest levels of value and customer service to our clients in financial services.”

Also commenting in the official press release, Chris Davis, Co-Founder of TwoFour added, “Working in cooperation with Broadridge enables us to provide industry participants with an opportunity to seamlessly implement a leading set of capabilities for treasury trading and operations. The integrated solution offers best-of-breed and leverages a modern HTML5 front end. We believe that our cooperation offers a competitive alternative in the treasury solutions marketplace.”

According to information on the TwoFour corporate website, all TwoFour solutions are built in C# on Window’s .NET framework supporting MS SQL Server, and include HTML5, and as per the above mentioned press release HTML5 is used in the integrated solution from both firms.

Mr. Davis has an extensive career in developing brokerage technology and the news today follows a previous major announcement the company had made when it struck a deal with ABN Amro earlier this year for its cash management solutions for Foreign Exchange. Mr. Davis is also listed as a contributing author on GTnews, and his firm TwoFour has published several white-papers and case studies related to foreign exchange on their corporate website.

As per the company's description, TwoFour’s solutions provide real-time data and are used by leading financial services organizations to improve speed and agility, enable better decision-making, reduce risk and drive down costs. Efficiency is a tangible asset in the context of how it can scale and the degree of revenue and value it brings to a company's product, structure or overall business operations.

For these reasons, staying up to speed on the newest technologies and approaches to improve operations is a constant challenge requiring either in-house development, out-sourcing and licensing 3rd party solutions, or strategic partnering.

Broad Coverage

Some of the functional highlights that TwoFour has that may be appealing to firms such as Broadridge Financial, like those which it lists on its corporate website including the following points regarding its Foreign Exchange offering

• Complete componentized front-to-back-office integration, providing high performance straight-through-processing
• Real-time aggregation and management of currency positions, risk, and P&L
• Aggregates and validates data globally from multiple source systems allowing for complete management of exposures
• Highly customizable data views, screen layouts, and reports empower users to more efficiently manage their business
• Highly configurable transaction lifecycle workflows empower organizations to maximize straight-through-processing and enables operational tasks to be managed on an exception basis
• Unattended end-of-day processing and global scalability enables 24×7 operations
• TwoFour’s Gateway supports connectivity and transformation from both standardized and proprietary messaging formats including, but not limited to, FIX, MQ, files, database, SOAP & web services
• Robust security and authentication features allow organizations to effectively manage security their security requirements
• Robust auditability and transaction history tracking facilitates research and reporting
• Client portal, sales management, pricing, trade capture, position management, P&L, what-if analysis, shared reference data, real-time market data, confirmations, settlements, revaluation, netting, matching, allocations, multicurrency accounting, reporting, and more

Choosing Synergies, When it Makes Sense

According to its company description in the official press release, Broadridge’s infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 90% of public companies and mutual funds in North America, and processes more than $5 trillion in fixed income and equity trades per day. Clearly, the company plays a significant role in various markets and as per the press release described that it employs approximately 6,400 full-time associates in 13 countries, giving it broad reach.

This also follows the announcement that Broadridge Financial had made when it improved its functionality within its PROactiveTM Matching product which is presented as a highly flexible, service-based trade confirmation solution which it enhanced to help financial organizations meet the new Dodd-Frank disclosure requirements for foreign exchange (FX) trade repositories, early last year in anticipation of regulatory changes.

Forex Forex Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Foreign exchange or forex is the act of converting one nation’s currency into another nation’s currency (that possesses a different currency); for example, the converting of British Pounds into US Dollars, and vice versa. The exchange of currencies can be done over a physical counter, such as at a Bureau de Change, or over the internet via broker platforms, where currency speculation takes place, known as forex trading.The foreign exchange market, by its very nature, is the world’s largest tradi Read this Term Magnates has covered a similar strategic partnership from technology driven brokerages and companies providing IT services and solutions in the retail and institutional side of financial services. The announcement from Broadridge Financial and TwoFour reiterate this trend of combining resources from two firms to produced a net result greater than the sum of each part.