Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Sumitomo Trust & Banking Live on Calypso's FX Solution

San Francisco, 13 October, 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that Sumitomo Trust & Banking ( STB ) has gone live with Calypso’s front-to-back FX solution. The implementation enables STB to enhance its IT infrastructure for its FX business and improve customer service and processing efficiencies.

STB explored several options to satisfy its FX business strategy, provide more effective customer service , and improve operational efficiency . Calypso was selected as it was a single system providing complete STP through settlement, which would allow STB to improve the efficiency of its FX processing . To help STB achieve its service goals , the system now has various features including trust FX, bulk entry of trades, rollover and allocation of trades, and margin control and limit management. To ensure that the system met Japanese market requirements, Calypso partnered with STB to complete support for Japanese market requirements.

A spokesperson for Sumitomo Trust & Banking, says: “Calypso has supplied us with a single platform for both interbank and customer FX trading, with supporting functionalities for both the front office and back office. We have now enhanced the infrastructure of our FX business with an automated system, built on modern technology, and have an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the FX business. This is our first step using the Calypso system to enhance our business infrastructure, and we are expecting further improvements to meet our business strategy goals and to provide better service to our clients.”

“In a market where margins have become very tight, banks need to be able to provide end to end connectivity for its customers to offer better customer service. They need to connect to liquidity providers, portals and banks. This is achieved by providing banks with a single platform to support the connectivity. In addition it reduces their need to use many systems which increases the potential for operational risk and higher maintenance costs. We have built a robust platform for the entire FX process which leverages all Calypso’s technology benefits,” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso Technology.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Rand Merchant Bank Goes Live on Calypso

Atlanta, 12 October 2004 – Calypso Technology announced today that South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) has gone live on the Calypso system for payments. The bank has licensed the Calypso system for cross asset coverage and is in the process of implementing the system for other product groups.

RMB sees Calypso as the right technology platform for the bank to support future business growth.

"Calypso fits well into the RMB technical architecture. Written in Java and designed for flexibility and customization it gives us a solid financial framework to work from,” said John Murray – RMB Technical Architect.

“The implementation of Calypso provides us with better control and enhanced efficiency, allowing us to support our current and future business needs in a cost effective manner,” added Wendy Donaldson – RMB, Treasury Operations.

RMB is Calypso’s first client in South Africa.

“RMB is well known for innovation in South Africa, which makes them an ideal partner for us to work with. We are looking forward to building our relationship further with them,” said Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso.

About Rand Merchant Bank
Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) is the investment banking arm of FirstRand, one of South Africa’s largest, publicly quoted financial services groups. RMB is a full-service investment bank with offices in South Africa, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Mauritius and Australia. RMB has enjoyed uninterrupted profit growth since its formation in 1977. Independent surveys consistently rank it first in corporate finance, structured finance, private equity and as the leading debt house in South Africa.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Calypso Launches Enhanced FX Module to Provide Complete Automation from Client to Settlement

San Francisco, 11 October 2004 – Calypso Technology announces today that it has launched an enhanced version of its foreign exchange (FX) module. Calypso’s FX system provides complete and seamless automation between bank customers, sales and trading desks, and the institution’s back office. The system is built to increase a bank’s profitability by providing effective sales management tools while lowering trading costs and reducing operational risk.

“With e-commerce initiatives driving down spreads in FX markets, banks are faced with the challenge of maintaining strong customer relationships to drive their business growth, while having to drastically reduce costs in their operations,” says Charles Marston, CEO of Calypso.

Calypso’s FX solution is a single system supporting client management, sales, multichannel pricing and deal capture, interbank trading and back office capabilities. A new web based client interface, WebFX, allows clients to enter trades via the internet. The system also provides connectivity to EBS, Reuters 3000, portals such as FX Connect, and liquidity providers. Other added features include customer service tools such as bulk entry and pricing of client trades and trade allocations.

Volume growth is supported downstream by Calypso’s award winning back office. The highly scalable back office, in use at banks such as HSBC and Dresdner, is completely integrated with the sales and trading capabilities of the system. The solution supports numerous messaging standards and actively assists in reducing operational risk with its exception based workflow processing. The Calypso system ensures that as business grows, banks will have a modern robust platform to execute the volume of trades.

Marston comments, “Innovation in the FX markets has come in the form of distribution. Banks can drive more sales through the e-commerce channels now available. While multibank portals have specialized in client distribution and traditional vendors have focused on interbank trading, Calypso’s approach is to streamline the entire process, by which crucial costs can be removed. We have looked at the FX business holistically and designed our system for automation with corresponding scalability.”

The FX module enables FX and FX options to be traded in a single system and is part of Calypso’s total, multi-asset solution, which consolidates all treasury, derivatives and securities products on a single technology platform.