15 October 2008 News

 

Wallstreet launches ESN - drops cost per trade from $25 to under $1

Wall Street Systems has launched the Electronic Settlement Network (ESN), a pay as you go post trade processing utility for the capital markets.

ESN was created to provide collective processing capacity for its members with associated economies of scale, introducing a transaction based model for processing FX, Cash and OTC derivatives. The utility provides capacity, functionality and operations on demand and is intended to set the benchmark for the lowest trade processing costs in the industry.

Launched in conjunction with partners Currenex, Bloomberg, ICAP and Logicscope, ESN should provide an outsourced, on-demand processing hub for financial institutions, intended to eliminate the need for large investments in IT infrastructure, upfront software license fees and ongoing operating costs.

ESN is designed to provide a scalable capacity, covering FX cash, FX derivatives, money markets, vanilla interest rate derivatives as well as listed futures and options.  Its services span the entire post trade lifecycle including position management, P&L, deal confirmation, settlement, credit exposure, cash management, scenario and risk analysis, accounting, reconciliation, overall workflow and reporting.  The utility can also be used by the largest banks seeking additional capacity to cope with soaring volumes and by prime brokers and electronic currency networks (ECNs) looking to provide a wider range of value added services to their clients.