STC Selected to Provide Integration Services; Solution to Provide Access to Bloomberg’s Professional Service and Trade/Order Management System
NEW YORK, June 20, 2000 - Accenture today announced that it is creating a solution to deliver straight-through processing (STP) services to the investment / asset management community on a global basis.
The solution, to be called Accenture WEBeSTP, is an Internet portal that will provide financial markets industry participants with a single point of entry for pre-trade, trade and post-trade activities. The purpose of WEBeSTP is to reduce the costs and risks currently associated with securities trading.
Accenture has chosen STC, a leading global eBusiness integrator, to provide the integration layer for WEBeSTP. Accenture is currently in discussions with other select service providers and industry participants regarding their potential involvement in the solution. For instance, Bloomberg L.P. has signed a memorandum of understanding with Accenture, confirming its interest in becoming part of the WEBeSTP solution by offering its clients access to its market information, analysis, news and trade/order management capabilities as a complement to WEBeSTP.
"Asset managers in the United States, who manage $15 trillion, spend between $30 billion and $45 billion annually in what are largely non-value-added tasks," said Jim Honohan, a partner in Accenture’s Financial Services practice who directs the firm’s STP activities. "We expect that Accenture WEBeSTP will reduce the time, money and risk associated with transitioning to a T+1/STP environment for hundreds of asset managers on a global basis."
"Finding a cost-effective STP solution is one of the greatest problems confronting asset managers. Our involvement with the Accenture WEBeSTP solution would be consistent with Bloomberg’s commitment to provide STP solutions within a value proposition that enhances returns and will enable asset managers to focus on their core competencies of investment management and customer relationship management," said Lou Eccleston, director of global transaction and data services at Bloomberg.
Using the advanced Web-based capabilities of STC’s e*Xchange eBusiness Integration Suite, Accenture WEBeSTP will integrate best-of-breed applications in a toolset that can dynamically link customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities with real-time portfolio management information. Specifically, the portal will facilitate real-time messaging and information flow between the client and various providers of services to accomplish tasks such as trade management, investment accounting, enterprise management and benefits outsourcing. It also will enable portfolio managers and their assistants, as well as their firms’ sales and customer service representatives, to check markets and execute orders with their counterparties - all from their Web-centric computers. In addition, portfolio managers’ clients will be able to access their own up-to-date account information over the Internet via WEBeSTP.
"Combining Accenture’s expertise in building and integrating business processes with our robust, end-to-end infrastructure solutions will provide financial markets firms with a powerful solution," said Frank Fallon, vice president of financial services for STC. "WEBeSTP should help significantly reduce transaction errors, which cost the industry $12 billion each year."
The Accenture WEBeSTP solution was conceived and is being developed at the Accenture STP Center of Excellence, located in New York City. The STP Center of Excellence is Accenture’s central source of STP knowledge capital, which covers all industry segments, including primary and secondary broker/dealers, asset management firms, custodians, correspondent clearing firms, exchanges and shared utilities.
Straight-Through Processing (STP)
STP solutions are needed to help financial markets firms meet the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s expected call for one-day trade settlement (T+1), as well as to meet the global demand that has resulted from the explosive growth of online trading. Presently, the entire trade lifecycle, from initiation to settlement, is a complex labyrinth of manual processes, taking several days. STP enables the entire trade process to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention. When fully realized, STP will provide broker/dealers, asset managers, custodians and other financial services players with tremendous benefits, including greatly shortened processing cycles, reduced risk and lower operating costs.
About STC
STC (Nasdaq:STCS - news) is the leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBI) solutions enabling the seamless flow of information within and among enterprises. With its flagship solution, e*Xchange eBusiness Integration(tm) Suite, STC provides the industry’s first comprehensive strategic eBusiness infrastructure to unlock the true potential of eBusiness with unprecedented performance and reliability. Since shipping its first product in 1991, STC has successfully integrated systems at more than 1,200 leading organizations worldwide.
Software Technologies Corporation (STC) is headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., with marketing and sales headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. For more information, please visit www.stc.com.
About Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P. is a global, multi-media based distributor of information services, combining news, data and analysis for financial markets and businesses. Bloomberg provides real-time pricing, historical pricing, data, analytics and electronic communications 24 hours a day through 150,000 BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONALSM terminals used by over 400,000 financial professionals in 100 countries worldwide. Bloomberg’s electronic trading products include: BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK®, BLOOMBERG POWERMATCH and the BLOOMBERG® Electronic Trading System.
Bloomberg News, with 850 reporters in 78 bureaus, is live 24 hours a day over the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONALSM service and is carried in over 850 newspapers worldwide. Bloomberg also produces a number of related print and electronic media products for distribution worldwide. These include BLOOMBERG TELEVISION and BLOOMBERG RADIO programming, Bloomberg, Bloomberg Personal Finance and Bloomberg Wealth Manager magazines, The BLOOMBERG® Web Site (www.bloomberg.com) and the BLOOMBERG PRESS® line of investment books.