Scrittura P2P aims to shrink the current enormous backlogs of post-trade documentation by enabling prompt, accurate processing between all parties involved in these complex investment transactions. The new solution will further demonstrate Interwoven's ongoing commitment to developing leading solutions for the financial services industry.

The processing complexities of derivatives generated headlines recently when massive multi-billion-dollar backlogs of post-trade documentation drew the concern of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom, the Federal Reserve in the United States, and other financial regulators. While this regulatory attention has led to a heavy focus on credit derivatives, the processing of other complex instruments - for example structured products - has largely been ignored.

"The regulatory spotlight is firmly fixed on how the structured products industry deals with the trading and processing of complex financial instruments," commented Gavin Little-Gill, director of Tower Group, the leading research firm focused on the global financial services industry. "The overriding theme of the market's concerns is the need for automated post-trade technology to support the complex workflow and immense documentation generated by trading structured products."

The workflow for derivative trades typically requires a number of messages in a wide variety of formats. Current processing systems handle messages only in strict and inflexible formats, forcing all other data transfers to be processed outside the systems by hand, thereby contributing to the growth of backlogs. Scrittura P2P will enable trading messages to contain any data format, removing the restrictions imposed by existing message protocols. Scrittura P2P will support both structured and unstructured trade data, as well as any custom messages sent between financial parties.

Current systems are available only as hosted solutions, potentially exposing confidential financial data to third-party companies. Scrittura P2P will securely exchange trading information directly between participants without an intermediary hosted connection, addressing concerns raised by financial experts regarding the secure and confidential exchange of trading details through third-party servers.

Scrittura P2P will provide numerous features to reduce confirmation processing times and increase the accuracy of derivatives trade processing, providing significant cost and operational benefits for financial services firms. Scrittura P2P will be available as a standalone, independent solution or will operate seamlessly with Interwoven's Scrittura solution suite, a market-leading family of products for end-to-end processing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.

Jos Stoop, vice president and general manager of Financial Services Solutions at Interwoven, stated, "Our financial institution customers have told us that they were looking for an efficient way to communicate and share processes with their clients, peers and service providers. They are ready to contribute their ideas on process improvements, and Scrittura P2P gives them the vehicle to implement those innovations. Already, we are working with certain clients to develop next generation message and workflow sharing between their derivative operations environments, based on the Scrittura P2P infrastructure."