Omgeo, the leading provider of post-trade, pre-settlement trade management services, has achieved its millionth fixed income allocation via Omgeo OASYS in the first half of 2006.
This milestone marks significant momentum behind Omgeo's fixed income automation initiative. In 2005, the millionth allocation was not achieved until almost half a year later, toward the end of the fourth quarter. Omgeo has also seen significant progress with clients automating money market securities.
Fixed income allocations on OASYS at the end of June 2006 were already 45 percent ahead of allocations in the first half of 2005 and Omgeo anticipates this volume to steadily continue through the end of 2006. This progress builds upon the nearly 50 percent increase in fixed income allocation volume Omgeo saw in 2005 compared to 2004.
"As the Federal Reserve continues its trend of increasing interest rates, shorter duration instruments such as money market securities have become considerably more attractive to investors," said John Burchenal, managing director of asset class expansion at Omgeo. "As the trading volume of these investments trends upward, more and more clients are turning to automation, as evidenced by Omgeo's surge in money market traffic over OASYS this year. In the past, more complex fixed income instruments weren't heavily automated because the industry wasn't aware that such solutions existed. Today, through awareness in Omgeo's ever-growing fixed income community, we have seen more clients diversifying many different asset classes via OASYS."
Additional areas of success in H1 06:
Omgeo's Commercial Paper volume has increased by 600 percent over H1 2005. While the industry's US Commercial Paper volume has grown 40 percent from 2004 to 2006 (YTD) according to Federal Reserve statistics, the surge in Omgeo's Commercial Paper processing volume is a direct result of the company's dedication to automate clients' money market instruments.
Commercial Paper now represents more than 10 percent of Omgeo's total fixed income volume, compared with 2 percent in 2005, an indication of Omgeo's ability to automate clients' more complex instruments.
Omgeo's mortgage-backed securities volume has grown almost 70 percent over H1 05, paralleling steady trading progression in the market. Three quarters of Omgeo's broker community is now processing MBS allocations with more than half of Omgeo’s investment manager community.