In line with the growth of its derivatives business in Europe and a greater volume and complexity of its equity, credit and interest rate derivative transactions, Nomura is expanding its capacity for managing derivative trade confirmations.

By implementing Thunderhead, business users will be able to manipulate easy-to-understand rules and create content within an intuitive GUI. All client-ready confirmations and payment advices – including those for very complex and exotic derivatives – will then be triggered by the trading system and generated and delivered to the counterparty automatically. Thunderhead's multi-channel capability means that Nomura will be able to produce documents in any format required by trading partners, from print to fax to email. Movement to counterparty settlements made via FpML (Financial Products Markup Language) could also be supported.

This automation will allow Nomura to meet its aggressive goals for STP (straight through processing) rates. However, a proportion of trade confirmations will always demand manual intervention and review. Thunderhead’s integral exception handling capability will allow business users to define rules to route documents through the approval process using existing workflow applications.

Maintenance of full audit trail allows ongoing compliance with financial regulations and reduction in risk exposure.

"In an environment where industry regulations are becoming more pervasive and margins tighter, forward-thinking investment banks like Nomura are recognizing that advanced document generation capabilities are a valuable weapon to cut operational risk, manage compliance and control costs," commented Glen Manchester, Thunderhead CEO.