The solution enables banks and investment managers to make better decisions on trade viability and the level of collateral required through real-time tracking and assessment of collateral levels, an essential service in current market conditions where collateral values can change quickly.

The failures of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, alongside the problems experienced by AIG, have promoted the issue of collateral management to the top of the agenda for many senior financial leaders. As many credit-backed instruments have become riskier, financial institutions are seeking to move from managing collateral on a weekly or monthly basis to managing in real-time to prevent sudden losses.

To help firms address this market challenge, Misys is releasing Misys Summit FT Collateral Management, a strongly enhanced collateral management solution within Misys Summit FT - Misys' flagship cross-asset trading solution that helps banks and investment managers transact and manage a range of financial instruments, including derivatives and structured products, across front, middle and back office functions.

The functional strength of the new collateral management module allows firms to better define underlying agreements, collateral eligibility and terms, and provides an integrated application to view, assess and manage the collateral process. Additionally, it also enables firms to manage repo collateral and margins, calculate market valuations and margin - on-schedule or on-demand - and also includes a wide range of valuation options to improve valuations of derivatives positions and collateral requirements.

Isabel Schauerte, Analyst at Celent, comments: "Solutions that help value and manage collateral on a near-real-time basis will be one of the areas of IT investment in 2009. The importance of the collateral management function within banks and hedge funds has grown in the last year and there is a broad desire for a single, integrated platform that allows for straight-through processing of collateral management activities. Market participants are also interested in increasing the transparency of post-trading pricing and by consolidating multiple activities of the collateral management function into one system, a reduction of errors and inefficiencies can be achieved."

Dan Cohen, Global Solutions Manager for Misys Summit FT comments: "Our vision has always been to provide a solution that includes best-of-breed functionality in a full cross-asset front-to-back system and the significant investment in our collateral management offering means we now provide a 'one stop shop' for analysis, assessment and control of exposures and net positions in this area. We've also strengthened our services offerings and pricing capability so we can provide customers with a fully installed solution for managing collateral and counterparty risk in around 3-4 months."