The partnership will help firms that use derivatives to improve their assessment of the total cost of trade to make more informed investment decisions.

The evolving regulatory landscape, including regulations such as Dodd-Frank, EMIR and MiFID II, has significantly altered the operational environment for investment management firms. Central clearing obligations and increased margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives require firms to demonstrate that they have a holistic view of their risk, collateral, and potential costs when making trading decisions.

Firms opting for the Cassini solution integrated with SimCorp Dimension will be able to calculate initial margin for derivatives contracts pre- or post-trade. The partnership will also enable clients to carry out hypothetical simulations to assess total transaction costs including fees and initial margin for each clearing broker or clearing house, allowing the portfolio manager to choose the most cost-effective option.

Commenting on the partnership, James Carter, Director, Product Management, at SimCorp said: “Improving the front office functionality of SimCorp Dimension continues to be a key focus. We want to support asset managers in generating alpha, and by making the initial margin requirements visible to them ahead of the trade we enable them to make more informed investment decisions. We are pleased to be partnering with Cassini Systems in order to do this.”

Adding to this Liam Huxley, founder of Cassini Systems, said: “At Cassini we have developed a platform to truly bring the back office into the front office, by enabling post trade factors such as margin, collateral, fees, and operational limits to be fully integrated into the trading decision process. Our offering perfectly complements SimCorp Dimension which provides a seamless solution from order management through to position and collateral management.”

The Cassini solution is available for SimCorp Dimension users now in all current production versions of the system.