Omgeo, the global standard for post-trade efficiency, today announced that through the implementation of Omgeo Central Trade Manager (Omgeo CTM), 97% of Metzler Asset Management's transactions are being automatically processed.
Omgeo CTM automates the confirmation and allocation part of the trade lifecycle, involving investment managers, broker/dealers and custodian banks.
With around EUR 37 billion under management (as at December 2008) and 85% transactions being processed cross border, Metzler has demanding trade processing requirements. Prior to automation, Metzler's trade processing was manual and highly time consuming, and as a result, prone to errors and failed trades.
Since implementation, Omgeo CTM has significantly reduced operational risk and increased efficiency in Metzler's trade processing by the automatic central matching of equity and bond trades. Central matching has enabled exception only trade processing as a member of staff is only required to investigate transactions if discrepancies have been found. Prior to the introduction of Omgeo CTM at Metzler, a member of staff was required to manually check thousands of faxes in detail, resulting in a high rate of errors.
The firm has also benefited from Omgeo CTM's automatic settlement notification which via a SWIFT message enables the trade notification to be sent automatically to the custodian bank. Also, through the use of Omgeo ALERT, these settlement notifications can be automatically enriched with standing settlement and account instructions (SSI) without requiring any manual intervention.
Commenting on the benefits of Omgeo CTM, Reinhardt Damm, Head of the Buyside Execution Desk, Metzler said, "Implementing Omgeo CTM has enabled Metzler to handle increased volumes overall and cover a growing number of markets with virtually the same middle and back office resources we've had since 2001. Moreover, we have significantly reduced our operational risk through improvements such as a real-time understanding of our trade positions and a significant reduction in the rate of failed trades".
Adding to this, Oliver Herrmann, Regional Director Central Europe, Omgeo said, "We are pleased that Metzler is experiencing firsthand the benefits of automating the trade lifecycle through Omgeo CTM. As a result of recent market turmoil and high profile counterparty failures, we have seen a large increase in interest around trade processing automation in the German marketplace and beyond.
He continued, "Omgeo CTM volumes have increased over 250% since January 2006 and the community of clients using the solution has grown by nearly 27% in 2008. Additionally, the number of clients using the settlement notification functionality within Omgeo CTM has increased over 20% in 2008 and settlement notification volume has increased by 14% for the same time period. There is no doubt, reducing manual intervention and automating the trade lifecycle reduces operational risk".