In addition following the acquisition of SAM systems, the equities back office specialist, Eclipse has fully integrated the CREST interface for LSE connectivity.

"Following a mixture of client demands and our own strategy these two new features now put Eclipse in its own league as the premier multiple asset mid and back office processing application." Comments Patrick Thornton-Smith, Sales & Marketing Director at EST. "For some time we have been able to handle client demands for basic spread betting needs. However over the last few months we have enhanced this to provide a far broader platform that now covers spread betting on any asset, cross currency and on a unit per point, pip or tick movement. Spread bets are now becoming recognised financial instruments and the need for intermediaries to be able to provide these trades as part of an overall portfolio is increasing. This is demonstrated by orders from two existing clients for this module already."

The Eclipse CREST interface now allows users the immediate benefit of consolidating multiple systems onto one platform with huge cost savings and operational benefits. "As Europe moves towards the pan European equities clearing Single Settlement Engine (SSE) in 2008 where connectivity to agencies such as CREST and EuroClear become pre-requisites we are positioning ourselves as the best choice for both deep functionality and cross-asset processing," add's Thornton-Smith. EST is taking this opportunity of re-branding the SAM product to Eclipse Equities.

"The term 'multi-asset' is quickly becoming the buzz word for most vendors in the financial technology arena as 'STP' was a few years ago. We see this slightly differently from many others in that from clearing, accounting and settlement perspectives just being able to capture multiple trade types from ISV's for example is good but our focus is on the cross-asset element. Cross asset processing is a highly complex world where just producing a statement listing multiple assets is not sufficient. End clients increasingly want banks and brokers to efficiently manage their collateral and where possible effect cross margin opportunities across a huge range of instruments both listed and OTC, across any currency and interest rate curve. API connections to multiple exchanges are just the start and we welcome the strides being made by many ISV's in this respect as this reduces the interfaces we have to handle. However it is the cross-asset challenge that we are promoting and these new features demonstrate our efforts and strategy." Concludes Thornton-Smith