AcadiaSoft, today announced that four additional investment banks - BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley - are in production on MarginSphere, AcadiaSoft's online community for margin automation in the OTC derivatives market.
The new participants joined previously announced dealers Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and J.P. Morgan, bringing the majority of fed-14 banks onto MarginSphere.
"The addition of four more of the world's leading investment banks to MarginSphere ensures that buy-side participants that join the community can now have the majority of their margin calls automated," said Craig Welch, co-founder and CEO of AcadiaSoft. "With greater attention on collateral management due to heightened regulatory oversight, it is now essential for firms to create efficiencies and increase transparency through automation of their margin call and collateral management operations. By bringing such a large percentage of the OTC market on to MarginSphere, AcadiaSoft is offering a means to improve how clients manage these processes."
MarginSphere is a central messaging service that provides electronic exchange of margin calls, substitutions and interest statements between counterparties engaged in collateral management ─ helping to reduce inefficiencies and manage risk in an automated fashion. MarginSphere was developed through coordinated efforts between AcadiaSoft and a number of the industry's leading banks to ensure that functionalities necessary to address operational efficiencies, manage risk and comply with regulatory requirements are prioritized.
MarginSphere provides dealers and investors with groundbreaking and effective tools to manage all aspects of collateral communications online, seamlessly allowing parties that manage collateral agreements access to information instantaneously. Users may view their collateral exposures and commitments and make adjustments as needed. All activity is time stamped, and a full audit trail of activity is created, satisfying existing regulatory requirements. By reducing operational risk and dramatically increasing transparency, the service significantly improves and expedites the margin call process. The existence of a centralized location from which to track and manage margin calls helps avoid costly and time-consuming errors while also helping to achieve straight-through processing.