Absa Capital upgrades with SunGard's Front Arena for cross-asset trading

Front Arena provides position control across multiple asset classes and business lines, providing Absa Capital with a consolidated cross-asset platform to manage its increasing trading volumes. The upgrade brings trading enhancements that help to ensure rapid time to market and increased transparency across all trading and sales activities.

Absa Capital required a solution able to handle the growth in its trading activities, driven by an already significant increase in its trading volumes. A customer of Front Arena's for the past 12 years, Absa Capital will address this growth by using features from Front Arena's latest release to build onto its existing trading system. The upgrade will help Absa Capital gain increased transparency throughout the trading and sales lifecycle, while also helping ensure pre-determined operational and desk level risk controls are adhered to across all books and products. In addition, Front Arena provides the firm with complete cross-asset coverage in a single system, which helps facilitate reporting and integration with other areas of the bank.

Ian Kriegler, chief information officer at Absa Capital, comments, "To support our growth strategy it was important for us to establish a stable and resilient trading environment. Front Arena's track record within Absa Capital and its ability to grow with our needs, if and when required, made it a best fit. The Front Arena upgrade also supports our initiative to streamline our operations and increase accuracy and consistency throughout the trading lifecycle."

Juerg Hunziker, president of SunGard's Front Arena and Adaptiv business units, said, "By providing Absa Capital with a complete position control infrastructure, Front Arena can be configured to meet changes to Absa's business workflow. As a result, Absa Capital has a technology solution that can grow and evolve to meet its future requirements."