OUTSIDE THE REGION

National Australia Bank in London has completed phase one of a project to integrate the front-, middle- and back-office components of its treasury systems. The bank expects to begin using the same tools to support the foreign exchange and money market dealers in its other branches worldwide. The integration efforts in London continue even as NAB in its Melbourne headquarters proceeds with a project to build a global integrated back-to-front office system using Infinity Financial Technology's class library and toolkits (D&IS, 10 April). The fruits of that effort aren't expected to make their way to NAB's main overseas dealing centres for at least another three to five years, a source told D&IS sister publication Risk Management Operations. In London, Oxford-based Rand Information Systems has furnished the bank with an interface that routes transactions entered by NAB dealers into the bank's deal capture system to the bank's limit system, which is Reuters' Global Limit Control System. The deal capture system NAB London uses is a PC-based system called FS-Dealer, which was developed by U.K.-based Future Systems and subsequently acquired by Kapiti. For its back office, NAB also uses Kapiti's Equation.

U.K.-based Schroders merchant bank and fund management group has also bought Infinity Financial Technology's Montage data model and its Fin++ class library to act as a technology base for a global risk management system. Schroders plans to use the system to support its dealing activities in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as London, New York and Zurich. Andersen Consulting will assist in the planning. According to Lester Gray, Schroders' director of risk and IT, the firm will use an Infinity-based global data repository to analyse its market and credit risk. Work is now underway to build interfaces between Schroders' existing desk-specific applications and Infinity's Montage.

J.P. Morgan in London is begun a project to re-engineer its swaps processing. For various parts of its planned new architecture, the firm is evaluating Infinity's Montage, products from New York-based Summit Systems, as well as internal development. J.P. Morgan uses Montage in New York, although not to support its swaps dealing operation.

Toronto-Dominion Bank has bought a global license to use Summit Systems' integrated front-to-back office derivatives trading and risk management system, overturning an earlier decision to build the systems in-house. The internal effort was halted after cost over-runs, according to a bank official. Toronto-Dominion chose New York-based Summit after evaluating competing systems from C*ats Software, Infinity Financial and Renaissance Software, all California-based derivatives software suppliers. The bank will deploy the Summit system in North America in the first quarter of next year and bring it to Asia and Australia shortly thereafter.