Charles River Development and AcadiaSoft have partnered to automate communication of margin calls and collateral estimates between counterparties in the Charles River Investment Management Solution (Charles River IMS) for over-the-counter (OTC) and exchange-traded derivatives.
AcadiaSoft’s MarginSphere, part of the AcadiaSoft Hub, helps streamline and automate the margin process within Charles River IMS.
MarginSphere connects market participants and service providers to simplify workflows for parties engaged in collateral management—buy and sell-side firms, fund administrators, and clearing firms.
For middle office teams, Charles River automates the collateral life cycle, providing counterparty contract data and a central workbench to manage all margin call workflows.
According to Charles River Development, European Market Infrastructure Regulation, Dodd-Frank and other regulations, based on the Basel/International Organization of Securities Commissions policy framework, have increased collateral and margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives. This has also led to a significant increase in margin call volumes.
Charles River was acquired by State Street Corporation in October last year and the combined companies are developing the industry’s first ever global front-to-back investment servicing platform offered by a single provider.
Scott Fitzpatrick, director of collateral business and client operations at AcadiaSoft, said: “Manual processing is error-prone, costly and is too unwieldy and risky to support current and emerging regulations.”
He added: “MarginSphere provides a central margin service for the industry that replaces email and other manuals, proprietary practices with an automated, standard and verifiable electronic process for all parties.”
John Plansky, CEO of Charles River, commented: “Our partnerships with leading providers of collateral management services help our clients keep pace with new regulations governing OTC derivatives.”
“With derivatives seeing increased use by institutional portfolio managers, the alliance with AcadiaSoft helps our clients seamlessly support the full lifecycle of these instruments.”
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