72% of Organizations are Restricted by Their Trading Capabilities
Siloed Business Workflow Functions Cause Firms to Suffer, According to Sybase Survey
DUBLIN, CALIF. – JUNE 23, 2009 — Sybase, Inc. (NYSE: SY), an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software, today announced the results of a global survey of 220 investment bankers and risk managers in April 2009, which shows that many organizations’ technology is restricting their trading capabilities.
“Firms are openly admitting that they are restricted by their current trading capabilities and as they adapt their strategies to cope with the current financial crisis and identify new ways of making money, the need to improve existing trading platforms is even more prevalent,” said Stuart Grant, Business Development Manager for Capital Markets, Sybase. “Despite cutbacks in the financial services industry, there is noticeably a need to move away from restrictive, traditional technologies and for investment in new fit for purpose technology that delivers a clear view of the markets and business activities in real-time. This confirms what we have seen this past year in our customer base with the rapid adoption of Sybase® RAP – The Trading Edition™ as the leading technology platform for real-time analytics in capital markets.”
To further support the survey, a Sybase/Financial Insights study* conducted during the first quarter of 2009, confirms that not only are financial firms revamping their strategies across capital markets, but they are doing so en masse and quickly. The study showed that despite the broad decline across the capital markets due to the financial crisis, spending on IT investments is expected to at least hold its ground, with some pockets of moderate growth, in the year ahead.
Among the findings, 67% of respondents believed front to back office workflows suffer as a result of departments having control over their own data management platforms as opposed to a centralized data management. Furthermore, 67% of respondents felt that front/back office workflow should be more centrally managed.
Grant continued, “Firms should be defining day-to-day business workflow functions of data to meet regulations and integrate data fully into centralized data management systems. With a data management application that can grab data from multiple platforms, moving content and data horizontally throughout workflow firms will have accessibility to the same level of content available in both pre- and post–trade functions dramatically improving efficiency and confidence in decision making. With a centralized data management platform to consolidate and centralize market data with internal data, firms will be able to conduct more complex modeling, improved backtesting, and faster intra-day risk and compliance reporting all utilizing a single platform which eliminates the challenges inherent in integrating multiple vendor solution.”
Interestingly, according to the survey, the scope of the challenge to solve data management is a very important issue. Of the respondents polled, all agreed that addressing the data management issues would require dedicated time, resources and technology, with over 50% identifying the required solution as a major project.
“Existing systems are extremely varied throughout the financial services industry and as firms comply with MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) in Europe and Reg NMS (Regulation National Market System) in the U.S. to meet best execution policies, the technology of the platform may restrict trading activity and more importantly may result in the firm losing any competitive advantages. Simply put, inferior technology equals loss of customers and money,” added Grant.
Some areas of IT investment are anticipated to moderately increase with risk management a dominant area of expected investment. Overall 85% of respondents surveyed thought that pre-trade risk analytics need to become part of the trading applications.
Sybase worked with Wilmotts Magazine to survey 220 global investment bankers and risk managers in April 2009.
*To download the “Emerging From a Crisis, a Sybase Study on Capital Markets” conducted by Sybase and IDC Financial Insights full survey, visit: www.sybase.com/stateofcapitalmarkets2009. For more information on Sybase’s capital markets solutions, visit: http://www.sybase.com/capitalmarkets.
To learn more about Sybase financial services solutions, please visit us in booth #2111 in the Grand Ballroom on Exhibit Level 2 at SIFMA 2009 Technology Management Conference & Exhibit at the Hilton New York in New York City, June 23-25, 2009.
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About Sybase
Sybase is an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software to manage, analyze and mobilize information. We are recognized globally as a performance leader, proven in the most data-intensive industries and across all major systems, networks and devices. Our information management, analytics and enterprise mobility solutions have powered the world’s most mission-critical systems in financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing and government. For more information, visit http://www.sybase.com. Read Sybase blogs: http://blogs.sybase.com.
Sybase and RAP – The Trading Edition are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sybase, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
For more information, please contact Sybase Public Relations.