National Stock Exchange (NSX) will use SunGard's Brass Liquidity Services' dual routing infrastructure to route all traffic NSX directs to other venues for best execution obligations.
National Stock Exchange (NSX) will use SunGard's Brass Liquidity Services' dual routing infrastructure to route all traffic NSX directs to other venues for best execution obligations. NSX will also use SunGard's correspondent clearing services to support its clearing needs. NSX is a cost-effective provider of exchange services, committed to transparency, pricing leadership and partnering with its customers. SunGard's Brass Liquidity Services is a suite of market access solutions for both buy- and sell-side institutions, and includes sponsored access, directed and smart order routing, dark aggregation and advanced algorithms.
NSX will use Brass Sponsored Access, from SunGard's Brass Liquidity Services suite, to help it with Reg NMS-compliant, direct connectivity to protected venues, ECNs and dark pools*. Brass Liquidity Services' dual-routing infrastructure will help NSX fulfill both its best execution and Reg NMS obligations by supporting exchange requirements to route away flow to any of the Reg NMS protected venues showing a better price. Additionally, the dual structure will provide NSX with a backup routing infrastructure and a cross-platform failover mechanism. This will help ensure reliability and stability, especially during volatile trading conditions.
NSX will leverage Brass Sponsored Access‘ high-speed, low-latency direct connectivity to reduce the number of hops it takes to reach available, better-priced markets.By minimizing the number of hops, latency in the trade lifecycle is reduced, and will help NSX to better fulfill its best execution obligations. Correspondent clearing services will help NSX to increase post-trade efficiency, while decreasing infrastructure requirements and clearing and settlement costs.
Joseph Rizzello, chief executive officer of NSX, said, "We have a commitment to our clients to provide cutting edge technology and keep our cost structure low. SunGard worked with us to tailor a custom solution with competitive pricing that meets our own unique needs and will help us reduce our operational expenses. We look forward to the prospect this presents for offering our clients even more competitive pricing and we are particularly excited to provide SunGard's customer base with our low-cost solution."
Raj Mahajan, president of SunGard's trading business, said, "NSX and SunGard share a customer-centric focus and approach to running our businesses. We strive to present our customers with cost-effective, innovative solutions, across the entire trade lifecycle. NSX's selection of SunGard demonstrates how we strategically partner with our customers to provide tailored, complete solutions that support all areas of the business."
Separately, RiverCross ATS has selected SunGard's Brass infrastructure to host its fully-automated dark pool servicing sell-side providers.
The connection to RiverCross will give customers of SunGard's Brass direct connectivity to a unique pool of dark liquidity and another option to execute order flow before quoting in displayed markets. RiverCross ATS, launched in May of 2008, is a matching platform that offers continuous crossing services for both block and non- block orders in a secure environment, running in a high-availability, fault-tolerant mode. SunGard's Brass is an integrated trade order, execution and compliance management solution supporting Nasdaq, listed, listed market making and sales trading for sell-side institutions.
SunGard's hosting services will provide RiverCross with a cost-effective, low-latency, reliable and scalable infrastructure. Integration with Brass will help drive order flow from Brass's deep customer base of over 130 sell-side institutions to RiverCross' optimized liquidity and low-impact execution.
"The growth in dark pool usage has been tremendous, from less than one percent of equity order flow five years ago to about 8% today," said Larry Tabb, founder and chief executive officer of TABB Group. "Dark pools allow traders to execute larger blocks without leaking information providing larger investors with lower cost executions. While the field is getting crowded, dark pools with the lowest latency, the least information leakage, and the highest match rate will do well."
Paul Onderdonk of RiverCross, said,"SunGard has demonstrated reliability in providing hosted applications for US equities and listed options trading, which ultimately led us to launch using SunGard's Brass."
Raj Mahajan, president of SunGard's trading business, said, "We are pleased that RiverCross has chosen SunGard for the mission-critical role of hosting and providing a reliable infrastructure to power its new alternative trading site. This relationship offers a value-added service to our customers by providing increased access to a dark pool that is expected to have a high degree of system uptime and scalability."
Separately, Transamerica Financial Advisors will be the first major independent broker-dealer to deploy new functionality available through SunGard's Protegent Customer Onboard in its comprehensive paperless office platform, TFA Synergy.
Transamerica has been using Protegent Customer Onboard to facilitate the opening of new brokerage and non-brokerage accounts. It will now also use Protegent Customer Onboard's new integration with DST Systems, Inc.'s new account web service, to facilitate the maintenance of new accounts and electronic mutual fund transactions for the direct-to-fund business channel.
Using Protegent Customer Onboard, Transamerica Financial Advisors will be able to initiate new mutual fund account transactions for mutual fund families that accept DST straight-through processing feeds. This will help representatives at the firm to complete the appropriate electronic application for a mutual fund transaction, to be reviewed by Protegent Customer Onboard for data completeness and suitability. Applications are then submitted through the DST interface to the mutual fund family, which can confirm receipt of the application and supply a newly established account number-facilitating tracking and management of the new customer record.
Paper checks from clients are processed via a conversion to electronic ACH banking instructions through Protegent Customer Onboard. Transamerica will be able to obtain real-time status reports on submitted business.
Dan Trivers, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Transamerica Financial Advisors, said, "Using SunGard's Protegent Customer Onboard's interface with DST Systems, will help our representatives manage their clients' mutual fund transactions more efficiently and cost-effectively without generating a single piece of paper. Using Protegent to help enable straight-through processing for mutual fund accounts takes our TFA Synergy platform to the next level."
Steve Sabin, chief operating officer of SunGard's Protegent business unit, said, "With heightened regulatory scrutiny, increasing cases of identity fraud and prevailing antiquated systems, managing the new account opening process has been a growing challenge for many brokerage and insurance firms. Protegent Customer Onboard does more than address the manual and disparate process challenges - it is a comprehensive offering that helps firms manage the end-to-end client relationship."
Targeting US-based retail broker-dealers specializing in general securities, life insurance, annuities, and advisory businesses, Protegent Customer Onboard helps reduce the number of accounts rejected due to missing or inconsistent data, e.g. Not In Good Order (NIGO) issues. Protegent Customer Onboard is available as a stand-alone solution or as an integrated component of the Protegent solution suite for management of the compliance lifecycle. It helps ensure compliance with FINRA regulations, such as Rule 2821, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Customer Identification Program (CIP) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.
By automating and expediting operations for representatives and supervisors, Protegent Customer Onboard not only supports books and records requirements, but also provides a business-friendly platform for modification of rule logic and screen structure to support changing business and regulatory requirements.