Allianz's Italian group RAS SpA, today announced that it has selected SunGard's Reech FastVal and Reech REAL for the valuation of its structured products.
The service will help enable RAS's risk department to report standard, consistent values for its IAS 39 reporting requirements.
Reech FastVal also helps RAS to monitor the maturity of any given portfolio of callable issues. With increasing complexity in derivatives pricing and construction, valuations may differ between counterparties. In order to evaluate different contracts from different counterparties, an independent platform offering a quick and decisive price is needed.
Michele Gaffo, investment and risk strategy director at RAS SpA, explained: "RAS's financial department decided to find an independent provider to develop and maintain an internal pricing system comparable with industry best practices, in terms of high quality of results, quantitative expertise and sophistication. The system developed internally is based on SunGard's Reech libraries. In this way we are able to focus on flexibility, customisation and integration with internal processes and legacy accounting systems."
SunGard's Reech FastVal is powered by the Reech ADEP (Automatic Derivatives Pricer) language. ADEP is used to describe any financial product, in plain English, from a simple vanilla swap or option to the most complex hybrid structure, and instantly provide the value and risk management parameters for the product.
Samuel Hard, senior sales manager at SunGard's Reech business unit, added: "RAS was looking for a transparent and innovative solution. It selected Reech because of its flexibility to adapt as the industry develops and more complex products evolve. Through the use of our generic models, which facilitate the pricing of any product, SunGard's Reech will help provide RAS with a cost-effective, long-term solution."
Separately, SunGard today announced that Principal Funds, the mutual fund business of the Principal Financial Group, has upgraded to InvestOne Enterprise, SunGard's next-generation investment accounting and reporting technology platform. In addition, dition, Principal Funds has contracted for SunGard's InvestOne Enterprise Exception Manager Module, which allows InvestOne Enterprise to process exceptions automatically based on user-defined business rules.
Principal Funds currently has over $56 billion in assets (as of 12/31/06) and has been an InvestOne application service provider (ASP) customer since 1991. With the upgrade, Principal Funds migrated over $33 billion in assets from a previous version of InvestOne and deployed $22 billion in new assets to the InvestOne Enterprise platform. Principal Funds acquired the additional assets in the 2006 acquisition of WM Advisors.
The upgrade to InvestOne Enterprise has helped Principal Funds improve fund accounting and operational efficiencies by taking advantage of features designed to streamline back-office operations, including a customizable browser-based Dynamic Desktop with role-based workflows and extended reporting capabilities. Once the InvestOne Enterprise Exception Manager Module is implemented, Principal Funds will be able to process accounting exceptions on a more proactive basis by employing customized rules.
"In the short time since our upgrade was completed, InvestOne Enterprise has enhanced the efficiency of our organization. We have begun realizing benefits through the easy-to-use interface and workflows built specifically around our business model," said Layne Rasmussen, vice president and controller, Principal Funds. "In addition to helping improve the way we work, the SunGard staff managed a seamless integration that was completed on time and on budget."
InvestOne Enterprise is an evolution of the industry-leading InvestOne accounting system into a configurable, enterprise solution based on an extensible and scalable service-oriented architecture. InvestOne Enterprise features a platform-independent architecture that is available on an ASP or installed basis, message-based integration with third-party systems and data sources, a meta data-driven architecture, and extensive Web-based administration features for easy system configuration and maintenance.
"With InvestOne Enterprise, SunGard combines the product's award-winning, next-generation technology with a proven and disciplined implementation methodology, helping enhance the value we can deliver to our customers," said Doug Morgan, president of SunGard's investment systems business unit. "We take great pride in our history of supporting Principal Funds and look forward to extending this relationship long into the future."