BST Awards 2018: Best Buy-Side Collateral Management Tool—TriOptima

When it comes to the niche corners of financial markets, few are as specialized or arcane as lifecycle events in derivatives trades—particularly collateral and margin management. Yet, equally, few are as important. With its triResolve Margin offering, TriOptima has once again proved its credentials in this complex field, providing a surprisingly elegant tool in a space that is not exactly known for being streamlined.

TriResolve Margin sets itself apart from the get-go. While most collateral management platforms tend to be sprawling, complicated systems that require teams of engineers to manage and maintain local installs, Margin is a web-based service that largely automates previously manual elements of the collateral-management process by using reconciliations data already in its systems. Users set their rules and tolerances and the system automatically works out exceptions, using analytics layered on top of the data processed by its engine to highlight where these occur and—importantly—what is causing them.

NEX Group, TriOptima’s parent company, claims that clients can be live in less than a day, but the real efficiency gains of triResolve Margin come from its integration layer. As expected, it works with other triResolve products, being natively integrated with the firm’s portfolio reconciliation platform, which enables much of the automation benefits, but it also completely integrates out-of-the-box with AcadiaSoft’s MarginSphere platform for collateral confirmations without requiring an additional contract. Like other offerings in the TriOptima stable, such as the pricing and valuations side of the business, which also won its category in this year’s Buy-Side Technology Awards (see page 49), it is based on a pay-as-you-go model.

The platform has approximately 150 users—nearly 100 of which are buy-side firms—stretching across the buy and sell sides, from asset managers and servicers through to corporates, regional banks and international financial institutions, at a time when the entire industry is being forced to deal with unprecedented regulatory challenges. Specifically for triResolve Margin, the introduction of margin for uncleared derivatives, which affects the very largest dealers through to buy-side firms, is proving to be a particularly keen challenge for many and has prompted the appreciable uptake of the platform.

The nature of triResolve Margin and the acute regulatory and operational challenges it addresses, especially from a buy-side perspective, is particularly compelling. And being web-based, rather than a locally installed platform, allows TriOptima to incrementally update it at will in response to changing client or regulatory needs, a critical quality at a time when collateral management functions are directly in the asset management and regulatory spotlights.