European Back Office of the Year

It was Clearstream’s Central Facility for Funds (CFF) product that impressed judges and led this leading provider of post-trade services to win the back-office category.

Clearstream launched CFF in May. It is designed to provide greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the settlement process of European domiciled investment funds. Judges were impressed by this urgently needed facility and particularly by its contribution to standardising industry processes.

Lack of straight-through processing and a lack of uniform standards have been a major stumbling block for funds to rival equities in post-trade efficiencies.

Also shortlisted ...

State Street (Special Commendation)
State Street broke new ground in 2008 by creating true and error-free straight-through processing for the foreign exchange market. It did this by combining its Global Trading Support Services (GTSS) product, which is a multi-asset electronic trading platform, with SSISearch, a company acquired by State Street in April and which provides the authenticated foreign exchange settlement instructions.

All participants in the GTSS/SSI tie-up are connected by Swift messaging. It is the only service where settlement instructions are fully authenticated by users, Swift-validated, and guaranteed by banks.

Bravura Solutions
Bravura Solutions has increased its client base and product range over the past year. This has included an extended managed services contract with Legal & General for three more years. Bravura Solutions is a market leader in the provision of administration and management applications for portfolio administration and transfer agency.

Sophis Value
Sophis’s market share and revenue has increased over the past year and the firm added 30 new clients. Sophis says this success is down partly to an easy-to-deploy architecture. Its growing status in the funds industry is recognised by judges.