Press Release
Charles River Forms Business Alliance with Cassini Systems to Automate Margin Estimation
Expands Charles River’s Collateral Management Capabilities
September 27, 2018
Boston and London — September 27, 2018 — Charles River Development and Cassini Systems have formalized a business alliance to automate the calculation of margin estimates and provide advanced pre- and post-trade analytics in the Charles River Investment Management Solution (Charles River IMS) for OTC and exchange-traded derivatives.
Emerging regulations and clearing rules mandate that investment firms post IM when trading cleared and non-cleared OTC derivatives, futures, and options on futures. Together with Charles River’s post-trade processing and settlements, IBOR, and performance measurement, expanded collateral management capabilities provide investment managers with a complete front and middle office solution.
“We focus solely on providing analytics that integrate trading, risk, margin, collateral and carry costs to buy-side firms,” said Liam Huxley, founder of Cassini Systems. “The ability to obtain pre-trade and end-of-day margin estimates directly from the Charles River IMS improves trading decisions by providing an accurate and consistent view of margin impact and lifetime trade costs across the trade lifecycle.”
Cassini Systems provides pre-trade IM estimates in real time for exchange-traded, cleared OTC, and non-cleared OTC derivatives and enables what-if analysis to help firms gauge the impact of IM on their portfolios, trades, and legal agreements. For cleared derivatives, firms can also determine the lowest cost Central Counterparties (CCP) and Futures Clearing Merchants (FCM) to clear through. For non-cleared derivatives, Cassini estimates IM impact on portfolios by applying ISDA Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM™). Cassini also provides end-of-day margin estimates for OTC and exchange traded derivatives.
“We have been working with leading providers of collateral management services to complete our middle office solution,” said Peter Lambertus, CEO, Charles River. “The alliance with Cassini Systems is an important step forward to help our clients automate collateral management functions including margin calculations and determine the most efficient use of margin.”
About Cassini Systems
Cassini Systems is a financial technology company with offices in New York and London. Cassini delivers an analytics platform for OTC trading combining risk, limits, fees, margin and collateral. Pre-Trade users can access “What If” trade testing, Best Execution and Best Hedge recommendation alongside Regulatory and Operational Limits Monitoring. Post-Trade users can access portfolio optimization services including compression, novation and porting. Cassini’s vision is to provide a holistic platform that allows the front office to include all Post-Trade factors in trade decisions. For more information, please visit cassinisystems.com.
About Charles River
Institutional, wealth, asset owner and alternative investment firms use the Charles River IMS to manage more than $25 Trillion in assets. The Charles River IMS is delivered in a private cloud via Software as a Service (SaaS) and includes portfolio decision support, order management, trading, compliance, post-trade settlement, IBOR, performance measurement and attribution, risk, collateral management, data provisioning, data management and other front and middle office capabilities.
Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, Charles River supports over 300 clients in more than 40 countries with 750 employees in 11 regional offices. For more information, please visit www.crd.com.