Trading
A trading and risk management platform for changing markets
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The Challenge
In today’s competitive and volatile markets, companies need a trading and risk management platform to gain better visibility into market conditions, as well as obtain the most complete and accurate information from within their own organization, in order to make profitable trading decisions. Managing risk through properly structured hedges while ensuring compliance with the appropriate regulatory measures is critical. Ultimately, the ability to create optimal trading strategies, stress test them, execute them and create the necessary reporting data through a single, unified platform is crucial to ensuring companies create profitability and maintain real-time volumetric and financial views of their positions and risk exposure.
The Opportunity
The opportunity for improved profits lies within the operations of the business itself – within the chance to create a single resource including all relevant data, by breaking down silos within the organization, and through applying and sharing deep expertise up and down the enterprise.
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The Openlink Solution
Openlink fully integrates front-, middle- and back-office systems, covering all aspects of confirmation, clearing, settlement, account reconciliation and cash management. Our front to back system is designed to support multiple asset classes across your business and handle high volumes of diverse instrument types. Openlink is robust and flexible enough to integrate transaction information from third-party and/or legacy trading platforms – making consolidation onto a single platform up and down the business practically seamless.
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Fully customizable workflows and interfaces for traders
ChallengeIn a fast-paced trading environment, being able to navigate through a system quickly and easily without having to switch in and out of different programs can mean the difference between capturing and missing opportunities.
SolutionYou can customize your Openlink solution to work the way your business likes to work – to conform to specific needs. From configurable trading skins that allow data collection from specified sources to individual trader desktops optimized for each role or even each trader, Openlink offers unprecedented flexibility. The Openlink interface offers special features for traders, including streamlined blotters, deal skins, dashboards and clickable report detail drill downs on individual trades.
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Get complete trade and market variable analysis prior to making the trade
ChallengeFinancial firms are paying greater attention to stress testing, which involves modeling hypothetical scenarios of positions to evaluate the impact of possible future events. And they’re looking to model increasingly complex scenarios to better understand their liquidity, credit and market risks across a much wider range of circumstances and situations.
SolutionWith Openlink’s Scenario Simulator, both hedge analytics and value at risk can be seen at a glance.
Openlink provides native hedge accounting capabilities, including automated hedge effectiveness analytics and reporting, giving you the reassurance that earnings statements are being correctly reported.
Additionally, portfolio revaluation and value at risk calculations can be evaluated in real time, allowing smarter decisions to be made more quickly.
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Manage complete operational lifecycle for orders and trades in a single place
ChallengeTracking all trades across your business is difficult enough. And when you add the practice of employing multiple, separate systems for the trading and placing of orders – it quickly becomes very difficult to know your exact exposure at any one time or to see it in any one place.
SolutionOpenlink can be configured to handle all operations across the life of any deal, including amendments, cancellations, buyouts, option exercising, price/rate fixings, margining and closeouts. Standardized interfacing with trade execution facilities, confirmations and clearinghouses allow trading and clearance with any counterparty in the world. Settlements can be arranged to vary from fully electronic to paper invoices and confirmations.
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Measure hedge effectiveness and minimize earnings volatility
ChallengeRegulatory changes impact hedge accounting. And in order to avoid earnings volatility, hedges that qualify as highly effective can be afforded hedge accounting treatment. However, implementing hedge accounting requires a large amount of work documenting the hedge relationship and proving both prospectively and retrospectively that the hedge relationship is effective. Additionally, evolving regulations and accounting standards (e.g., IFRS 9) for measuring hedge effectiveness make it more difficult to keep systems current with the latest rules and methodologies.
SolutionThe Openlink solution analyzes the effectiveness of hedges (under IFRS9, IAS39 or FAS 133), invokes the appropriate hedge accounting rules and automates accounting entries. If a particular hedge is later deemed ineffective, the hedge accounting treatment is automatically withdrawn. This solution supports document generation and statutory reporting required by law for hedge accounting.
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Get a complete view across the business for optimal materials hedging
ChallengeIn a competitive marketplace, manufacturers cannot afford to pass short notice price increases to customers. Yet prices for raw materials continue to be volatile, and manufacturers are faced with absorbing increased costs or making a more sophisticated use of hedging contracts. However, hedging is typically performed by the finance team with spreadsheets to determine requirements – far from where procurement of raw materials takes place.
SolutionOpenlink supports the combining of business processes along the workflow, from raw materials planning and procurement to hedging. This means purchasing and finance teams get a complete view of company-wide inventory and forward commitments when they purchase and hedge outstanding raw materials. Openlink enables the company to create effective hedging strategies that mitigate the effect of raw material price volatility on cost of goods sold without adding unnecessarily to hedging costs.
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Products that make up your Openlink solution:
