Danish Powerhouse Beefs Up Back Office

A member of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange for more than ten years, soon to become a member of Eurex, and the fifth largest financial institution in Denmark with some DKK 47.7 billion

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OPERATIONS
Danish Powerhouse Beefs Up Back Office

By Craig McGuire

A member of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange for more than ten years, soon to become a member of Eurex, and the fifth largest financial institution in Denmark with some DKK 47.7 billion in assets under management, Sydbank has certainly come into its own over the last few years. Looking ahead, officials at the Danish institution have made a few moves as of late

aimed at outfitting the firm’s back office with the tools to navigate the waters that lie ahead.

Sydbank officials recently tapped ATSM for its UBIX back-office package, which will be linked to Bankdata–Sydbank’s IT service provider. UBIX will not only provide integration to Bankdata, but Eurex margins calculations (as a member) and CBOT, Liffe and OM margins calculations (as a non-member).

"As a technology driven company, we require cutting-edge technology for our back office," says a official at Sydbank. "Our customers are showing increasing interest in trading foreign derivatives. We were therefore looking for a system that could offer very performing margin calculations for foreign derivatives."

The company’s securities trading activities are handled by Sydbank Markets, which currently employs a staff of over 90. Overall securities trading turnover amounted to more than 320,000 trades.

"UBIX will offer Sydbank comprehensive management of exchange traded futures and options on all major world financial markets," says ATSM Management Director Didier Bouillard.

UBIX standard features include multi-currency accounting, daily margining, automated trade and market data entry from exchanges and a range of control reports and client statements. UBIX uses a relational database and relies on a client/server architecture.

Nissen adds, "Among the systems available in the market today, UBIX is in our opinion, the system which is best suited to meet our specific requirements." Sydbank’s business, though, represents the first Scandinavian client ATSM has landed to date.

"We are well established in Europe and are now turning a European business into a worldwide business to respond to our clients’ growing global needs," says Bouilliard. ATSM touts a client list of over 120 financial institutions, including, BNP, Credit Agricole Indosuez, Natexis, UECIC, Deutsche Giro Zentrale, Dexia, UBS and BCI.