SunGard has extended Aligne, its energy trading and risk management (ETRM) solution, to help customers comply with the Dodd-Frank Act and find new opportunities in the growing natural gas market.
The latest version of Aligne offers energy companies new support for Dodd-Frank, including the ability to:
• Monitor position limits in real time and therefore stay within daily limits for OTC and listed derivatives trades
• Interface with and report creation and continuation data to the newly created Swap Data Repositories
• Calculate regulatory capital requirements such as required initial margin, calculated variation margin, comparison to collateral, and margin thresholds
The upgrade also offers an array of new features to help optimize the operations of natural gas market participants such as pipelines, Local Distribution Companies (LDCs) and storage operators. These include scheduling and workflow integration of marketer gas operations with pipeline operations; enhanced storage functionality, such as injection/withdrawal nomination validation for storage ratchets; and expanded pipeline allocations, nominations and actualization functionality.
In addition, users can now graphically view key performance indicators across all of their enterprise systems via real-time dashboards. Aligne's user interface has also been enhanced with an intuitive workflow to help further increase efficiency.
Patrick Reames, managing director of CommodityPoint, said, "Dodd Frank reporting and compliance requirements should be a top priority for virtually every organization operating in the North American energy markets. While not all firms will be impacted equally, it is incumbent upon every company to fully understand and proactively address their regulatory exposures and challenges, including the deployment of appropriate technology solutions, prior to the enactment of the new market rules."
Stephen Schwarz, senior vice president of product management for SunGard's Energy business, said, "The latest version of Aligne provides the real-time tools that energy firms need to help them manage the latest challenges and opporttunities, from the Dodd-Frank requirements to the rapidly expanding natural gas market. The enhanced reporting and calculation capabilities and the workflow improvements can also help increase efficiency through the organization."