The London Branch of Banca Caboto, the investment bank arm of Banca Intesa, have decided to replace their existing vendor with Eclipse, EclipseRisk and MarginClick as a significant re-engineering of its London based clearing and risk management operation.

Italian FCM Banca Caboto has decided to replace its existing back office system, supplied by Rolfe and Nolan (R&N), in favour of Exchange Systems Technology (EST)'s Eclipse product. The move was viewed as significant by many in a market that has traditionally been dominated by R&N and SunGard.

Chief of operations for Caboto, Nick Spencer-Skeen, told FO Week that the disparate nature of R&N's Merlin product could not address the competitive needs of a bank like Caboto. He said that while there was nothing wrong with R&N's products individually the suite of Eclipse, EclipseRisk and MarginClick was a more integrated package.

"What my clients want is data, not report - specific, targeted, queried data. For business development in terms of outsourced back office opportunities, Eclipse allows me to compete," he said.

EST's MD Rob Lowry said he was "delighted" that Eclipse would be white labelled by Caboto for its clients. "This decision shows that banks are not afraid to change mission critical systems...Performance and delivery are crucial issues in this industry and many players have been waiting too long for proven, functionally rich applications," he said.

Although neither firm commented on the length of the contract, Spencer-Skeen said that the switch was part of a longer term business model. He added that the mentality of post trade services was changing as clearing was increasingly being seen as a revenue stream in its own right and that the change of software vendor would enable Caboto to implement a new range of services in this area.