Northern Trust, Abbey National live on Algorithmics

Northern Trust has deployed the Algo Credit solution to support intra-day and 24 x 7 trading operations originating from their Chicago, London and Singapore dealing rooms. Algo Credit Limits provides a powerful risk calculation, aggregation and consolidation framework for comprehensive exposure and limit management.

While Northern Trust went live with Algo Credit for overnight batch operations in September of 2003, Algo Credit pre-deal limits management now adds the intra-day FX and money market activity of over 50 GT-Win live dealer workstations worldwide. The implementation also captures automated broker trades through the Northern Trust FX Passport, FX Caleo, and Reuters Electronic Broker Services. Algo Credit provides Northern Trust with 'what-if' pre-deal limit checking, real-time availability under exposure, settlement and country risk limits.

"Algo Credit's limit and exposure management functionality has enhanced our business potential by streamlining the credit approval process while providing multi-operational shared access to limits information," said Robert Seston, Vice President at Northern Trust.

Northern Trust is now focusing on integrating other business lines into the risk management framework provided by Algorithmics to facilitate both the global consolidation of risks across multiple business lines.

"Northern Trust is a solid example of how Algo Credit provides a consistent, integrated framework for managing credit risk across the enterprise," said Michael Zerbs, Algorithmics' Chief Executive Officer. "Not only is Northern Trust able to manage its credit limits and exposures through one central framework, but this information can also be leveraged by the front office in making risk-based business decisions."

Algorithmics has also announced that Abbey National Treasury Services plc has successfully implemented Algo Collateral in London to manage the operational margining requirements arising from all OTC Derivative collateralized trading activity. Algo Collateral is a proven enterprise-wide collateral solution, dedicated to reducing operational and credit risk, while simultaneously providing cost-effective support throughout the entire collateral management process.

"Through Algo Collateral, we have implemented a secure and sound collateral policy for our OTC Derivative business. The automation of the collateral process is key to the minimization of related operational risk and maximizing the return on our investment," remarked Nathan Bostock, Head of Abbey National Treasury Services. "Our decision to partner with Algo Collateral has been validated by the solution having been implemented on time and within budget."

"Abbey National Treasury Services has a strategic understanding of the importance of managing operational risk in order to take full advantage of the commercial opportunities presented by effective collateral management, one of the many business benefits of our proven Algo Collateral solution," said Michael Zerbs, Chief Executive Officer at Algorithmics.