Cliq provides a single point of entry for a variety of activities, including account set-up and allocations to help buy-and sell-side firms track, prioritize and manage operations across listed derivatives, futures and options globally. Its business process management and business activity monitoring capabilities help firms automate transaction flow and manage workloads according to a firm's priorities, facilitating improved risk management.

Gerry Murphy, president of SunGard's brokerage and clearance business, said, "Global, post-trade derivatives processing continues to be manual, inefficient and costly. With Cliq, SunGard is building on its experience in the derivatives industry and in automating the transaction lifecycle. Cliq's automation of listed derivatives processing will help buy-side firms achieve greater control of their activities, and help sell-side firms streamline their operational processes."

Cliq addresses the following challenges and trends in the derivatives industry:

• Firms require greater transparency and real-time information to understand their counterparty risk. In the exchange-traded derivatives world, it is very common for the end-user to have multiple clearing relationships, making it difficult to quickly understand enterprise-wide exposure.
• More efficiency is required in the listed derivatives clearing process, which is increasingly complex and opaque due to the rise in volumes, greater global activity, and more asset classes.
• The network of participants in exchange-traded derivatives is growing: the buy-side has more trading counterparties, the sell-side is adding counterparties, and more sophisticated institutional players are entering the market, including pension plans and hedge funds.

Stephen Bruel, research director, Securities and Markets, at research and advisory firm TowerGroup, said, "Because a great deal of money and relationships are at stake in the listed derivatives industry today, both the buy-side and sell-side need an electronic and standardized way of communicating various operational processes such as reconciliations, allocations and settlement. Automation will help firms reduce operational risk, control costs, and increase transparency around exposures as well as the current state of all transactions across all counterparties."