MFS Gets Custom View Into CTM With Vendor's Help

MFS Investment Management has gained a customized view into Omgeo's Central-Trade Manager - a post-trade, pre-settlement information-matching engine - by leveraging HelopGraph's TradeFlow platform.

TradeFlow can provide local-trade matching, exception handling and standing-settlement instruction (SSI) management, in addition to other functions. "TradeFlow allows us to track the lifecycle of a trade during the ETC (electronic-trade confirmation) process after it is picked from our OMS (order-management system)," says MFS Investment Management Senior Vice President Martin Pearce, who says the firm uses Macgregor's Financial Trading Platform as its OMS.

MFS also has a proprietary fixed-income order-management systems which it is looking to link into TradeFlow, adds Pearce. He says that MFS had the option to look directly into the CTM but wanted a more customized view than Omgeo was able to offer. By leveraging HelioGraph's product, MFS will be able to better customize the look and feel into CTM - a look which Pearce hopes will more closely match the current view MFS has into its internally built matching solution.

MFS is moving from its proprietary matching solution to CTM (and possibly GSTPA) so that its custodians will be able to see the status of trades while they are at MFS.

"We are moving forward to the industry solutions," says Pearce, "to the whole central-trade matching or VMU (virtual-matching utility) concept. Right now, custodians can't see trades on our in-house system."

The TradeFlow application currently sits on desktops at MFS, though Pearce says his firm is interested in the product becoming Web-based and thus more easily accessible.

MFS plans to go live on CTM around the beginning of next year and Pearce says that he hopes his brokers will follow. "We are going to initiate these conversations with our brokers to let them know what we're doing," he says. "We are going to liaise with our brokers and suggest that (converting to CTM) is what we would like to see."

As far as working with other matching utilities is concerned, Pearce says that MFS is watching and waiting, especially when it comes to the GSTPA and its Sept. 9 launch date. "We are going to sit back and watch. We haven't dismissed them totally and we are still keeping our ear to the ground. Omgeo has a lot of momentum but it will certainly be interesting to see how the next phase goes."