Multi-Currency Support

Netted Payments from Sungard VPM - Credit Notices, Transfers and Wires - Hedge Fund Implementation

Sujith Nair — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 06:59:49 GMT

In a previous post, I had described some of the challenges and implementation details of a recent payments system implementation for a hedge fund customer. You can read that post here.

This post further details the integration of our payments module (TS EFT) with Sungard's Virtual Portfolio Manager (VPM), subsequent details of netting and eventual transmission of payments, credit notices and transfers to the banks. The picture below provides an overview of the integrated system, details follow.

Sungard VPM Integration: Scheduled exports from Sungard VPM are created and uploaded to folder from which the TS scheduler pulls the data into the TS EFT module. The file imported has a list of transactions and each transaction has a unique transaction identifier and a field that indicates whether the transaction is a new one, an update or a delete request from VPM. Note that transactions from VPM can only be updated or deleted ONLY if the VPM transaction is not part of a netted EFT transaction already. If not, the EFT has to be rejected and only then will the transaction be updated or deleted.

Transaction Manager & Netting Capabilities: The EFT transaction manager lists all imported transactions and allows users to select transactions to net based on rules that can be defined per combination of fields - for example, only certain transactions maybe netted together based on multiple configurable fields (say the clearing broker and currency) from the VPM import file. As the transaction manager is completely XML driven; the product can easily be configured to support other portfolio management systems such as Advent Geneva. It can even be configured to integrate with in-house portfolio solutions.

Template Mapping: TS EFT supports creation and use of templates for all payment transaction types - note that these are templates that are independent of the banks themselves. The transaction manager also allows to map templates to end user selected mapping criteria based on data in the VPM input file. Here again, you could create and map templates - one per clearing broker and currency thereby requiring the user who nets the transactions to create the EFT to enter minimal information on EFT origination.

Payment Types: For this customer deployment, their custodial accounts are at BONY and CSFB has their prime broker accounts. Cash positioning for the custodial accounts held at BONY is done via TS CMO module and hence the need for forecasting for BONY accounts. Based, on the mapped templates or banks and accounts selected on free form transactions, the system presents the appropriate forms. The payment type selection criteria and associated transaction types for payments, notices and forecasts is described in the picture below.

A note about SWIFT for transmission: Our customer choose to utilize SWIFT for transmission to the banks (CSFB only, we communicate directly with BONY). It should be noted that if the payment bank supports secure transmission via FTP and since Treasury Sciences EFT supports standard formats such as ISO 20022 and SWIFT MT files, you do not need to use SWIFT only for transmission- it may not be cost effective.

I will describe some of these features using screenshots from the application in a later post. Thank you for reading.

Treasury Workstation Features - Your Enterprise's Global Cash Position

Sujith Nair — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 05:19:29 GMT

Today's post addresses what your enterprises global position would look like within our cash management operations module. Assuming that you have multiple banks that you work with (I have created four here) and say you position in multiple currencies, central cash management organization users will of course be able to see individual positions submitted for each currency.

The global position report enhances the enterprise wide view by providing a consolidated position across subsidiaries, currencies, banks and accounts.

Say we run the report for today. The system shows you the high level information upfront - i.e your total position across subsidiaries, currencies and all accounts at this point in time in your base currency - here USD is set as the base currency.

Below, the rolled up top level position, you would see the details- first data from day to day operations accounts grouped by currencies. Within each currency, you will be able to drill down to see the banks, the major transaction group (flow codes with CMO) totals and you will be able to view these in either the base currency or the transaction currency.

The third part of the global position report would show you your investment activity for the day. Data from operations plus data from investments would provide you with your consolidated top-level cash position.

So there you have it. Your top level enterprise wide position and drill downs by currency and banks to view details across operations and investments. Thank you for reading.

Cash Position, Hedge Fund Treasury Worstation, Reporting, Treasury Management , Treasury Reporting, Treasury Workstation, Treasury Workstation Reporting

Treasury Workstation - Multiple Currency Support - Rates

Sujith Nair — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:44:49 GMT

While demonstrating the product to potential customers who have multi-currency reporting, payments or positioning needs, a very common question that is asked is the ability to input, upload or integrate multi-currency feeds into Treasury Sciences products. This post addresses currency feeds and related integration options.

Treasury Sciences CMO allows end user administrators to setup currency rates in there different ways. You could input rates manually for each day or multiple times during the day and the system will use the last updated value as shown below.

Alternately, you could upload a list from a spread sheet- this option is typically useful if you utilize negotiated rates for multiple currencies for the day from your banking institution. As shown below, you would select the file and click upload. The file contains you base currency, the currency code for the converted currency and the rate.

Finally if you need a real time currency update, you could point to a third party web service- this could be one of the many currency feeds out there and you can get a real time currency update (note that additional parameters as needed to consume the feed can be configured as well). As you can see here, the TS system is consuming a web service (an internal test URL is shown below) from a third party source.

So, there you have it. Depending upon your need, you could either manually input currency rates, upload negotiated rates for the day from a file or setup an integrated, realtime feed.

Treasury Management System , Treasury Workstation

Flexible Cash Positions - by Currency, by Country, by Subsidiary, by ......

Sujith Nair — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:30:09 GMT

A cash position is the cash you have/don't have or expect to have/not have across your banks at a given moment in time. You create one or multiple positions during a day, multiple if you have considerable current day fluctuation in cash and make short term investment decisions based on it. All treasury management systems or workstations should let you do that - i.e create multiple positions during the day.

During our early days at Treasury Sciences (some 3 years ago now) while responding to one of those lengthy RFP's ; we responded to a series of questions on cash positioning. The reason I recall this particular RFP is because the questions were vague. They asked if the vendor's system could create cash positions, if the system could position by currency, by country, by subsidiaries and finally by departments within subsidiaries. These were followed by a series of questions on how much effort was needed for each and so on. Well, they may not have known what they wanted when they wrote the RFP.

Since this RFP, we have met with multiple organizations who needed some combination of the above mentioned cash positioning groups (It be noted that we are yet to meet anyone who has all of the above needs). For example, some organizations would want their subsidiaries to position for themselves across currencies with the ability for central treasury/management to view the global enterprise position.

Our product team went to work and came up with a solution - TAGS.

Tags are generic, yet a very effective solution that has been used by web based applications for a while now. So, we let end users (mostly administrators) create TAG's within TS CMO. Customers can call the tag what they want (typically named a Subsidiary or a Region or a Department or something that is meaningful to the organization) and create as many tags as needed. Then administrators assign accounts and users to these tags. The system ensures that users assigned to a certain tag work within the confines of the tag- i.e they can work with only those accounts that are associated with the tag.

Within tags, users have the ability to create positions in multiple currencies- the only restriction being the accounts that they have access to based on the tags they are associated to. Finally, there is the global enterprise position - the ability for central treasury or management to view the enterprise position across currencies and tags.

From a security perspective, roles still exist and overlap with tags. For example, a user with view only access based on her role would be able view data in the accounts that she has access to based on the tag she is associated with.

We think that use of TAGS is the most effective way of providing a large organization with flexible cash positioning capabilities - end user driven, flexible, easy to manage and secure. And it just takes several minutes for an administrator to setup or change using a web browser.

Do let me know if you have questions, especially if you have similar needs and have alternate solutions to this problem.

Treasury Managemen , Treasury Workstation, Cash Position