Panmure Gordon teams with MBA Systems to automate confirmations

The enhancement has been developed by MBA Systems, a leading financial systems specialist. The automation removes the need for trades to be entered manually and significantly reduces the risk of errors or omissions by the traders.

Panmure Gordon had been using the Confirms system to confirm transactions between it and its counterparty for a year when it approached MBA with its requirement to enhance the system. "Before trades had to be entered twice manually, once into our order management system and then again into Confirms. We were finding that there were times when errors would creep in or the trades were left to be entered by the middle office, which already had a very high work load," explains Paul Hawkins, senior developer at Panmure Gordon. "By integrating the two systems in the way that we have eliminates the errors and saves a considerable amount of time."

In operation, Panmure Gordon traders now access the firm's Fidessa order management system via a secure web service developed by MBA. The trader is presented with a series of icon options that detail the trade. The trade is then executed by simply clicking on the right icon. The full trade, through to the confirmation of the swap, is then automatically executed.

The Confirms system is owned by ICAP plc and provides straight through processing between Executing Brokers and Accepting Counterparties. The application has now become the industry standard and is used by over 70 market participants with transaction volumes continually increasing.