SunGard launches Apex solution for securities finance

SunGard has added a new offering to its suite of analytics, software and processing solutions for securities finance. SunGard’s Apex is a consolidated front-to-back office solution that supports equity and fixed income securities lending and repo trading. It has been designed to help increase productivity and automation, help drive down costs and help improve operational efficiency by providing a full front-to-back office solution for global securities finance trading and operations.

The complex mix of positions management, collateral, and trade lifecycle processing functionality that securities finance participants require means that firms need technology solutions that offer flexibility, control and transparency. Greater cost control requirements also mean that many firms want to move away from supporting and maintaining multiple systems. SunGard’s Apex offers a single, integrated solution that covers real-time position management, flexible trade capture, exception processing and process automation. It can help to optimise securities finance activities across trading desks, regions and product lines.

SunGard’s Apex helps firms manage their entire global securities finance business – equities and repos – in one framework. From position management, trading and P&L analysis on the front end, through risk and operations management in the middle-office, and settlement and interfaces in the back-office, Apex is a comprehensive international solution. Working in combination with SunGard’s Loanet and its inventory management system, Smart Loan, an industry standard for brokers in the U.S. equity/corporate markets, Apex can provide a complete view of the firm’s international and domestic securities finance business.

Craig Costigan, executive vice president and general manager, securities finance, for SunGard’s capital markets and investment banking business, commented: "If efforts to positively transform the strategy and workflow of a securities finance business are constrained due to limitations in technology, it becomes difficult for the business to compete. SunGard already serves a large, global securities finance community, and we have drawn on our experience with this community to create in Apex a technology solution that removes these constraints. The open, flexible architecture of SunGard’s Apex helps firms to tailor the solution to their individual requirements, helping ensure the best possible fit with existing and developing business lines."