Alerts Direct is an integrated risk management solution that works in tandem with ICAP's existing futures & options processing solution to deliver advanced real-time risk assessment for proprietary and customer business.

Andrew Berry, Managing Director for Global Clearing Services at ICAP Futures said: "Here at ICAP we have made no secret of our aggressive plans in F&O. When we checked the market for risk management software there was nothing that included all of the risk controls that we needed. Accordingly, Rolfe & Nolan worked closely with us to develop Alerts Direct, which delivers the accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive measurement and management of risk in a high volume and expanding business, both to our customers and ourselves."

Paul Miller, European sales director at Rolfe & Nolan commented: "We've designed and built Alerts Direct with extremely detailed input from customers and industry experts. We're responding to demand from market leaders for high performance risk management using margin standards like SPAN and TIMS. We believe that Alerts Direct is the fastest and most accurate risk management solution in the market. Merlin technology - modular, batch-free, exception based - makes it doubly attractive. We signed ICAP as a customer last year and are delighted to already be delivering another product to them."

Alerts Direct has been built to operate with any back office system and conducts advanced risk assessment and transaction flow management - including trade flows from outside the front office deal capture system - in three core areas. Firstly, it calculates margin shortfall and margin for over 60 global listed derivative markets. Secondly, it values portfolios against real-time price moves and compares them with limits and exchange requirements. Thirdly, it monitors a wide range of limits including lot limits, loss limits, collateral limits and credit limits.

Alerts Direct delivers a comprehensive suite of workflow tools, audit trails and historical information for MIS reporting across multiple instruments including F&O, CCP, FX, and CFDs. Alert messages can be routed via SMS, email or message queuing into company-wide risk management systems.