International Bytes

Bank of Cyprus licenses an Internet-powered trade finance solution from Surecomp; Barclays Global Investors launches trade settlement tracking and relative ranking system from JPMorgan; Banco BBA Creditanstalt S.A. and Ascent Financial Technologies complete the first customization of value-at-risk technology for the Brazilian financial markets.

Bank of Cyprus has licensed NetIMEX, an Internet-powered trade finance solution for corporate clients, from Canada-based Surecomp.

The licensing of NetIMEX is an integral part of the Bank of Cyprus plans to expand their trade finance operations in Cyprus. The bank is currently implementing Surecomp's back office thin client trade finance solution, IMEX, and intends to enable its corporate clients to perform trade finance transactions on the Internet before the end of 2002.

"We aim to achieve our stated goal of bringing greater service and efficiency to all phases of our trade finance operations, and this is why selecting NetIMEX to serve our corporate clients is a natural extension of our automation plans," said Panayiotis Hadjicharalambous, senior IT manager at Bank of Cyprus. "NetIMEX will offer our clients the opportunity to access their trade finance business through the internet 24 hours a day whether they wish to initiate new business, inquire on existing instruments or use the NetIMEX reporting facilities that are readily available."

Bank of Cyprus is the largest financial institution in Cyprus and is among the top 150 European Banks.

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Barclays Global Investors (BGI), one of the world's largest money managers, is using JPMorgan's Trade Settlement Tracking and Relative Ranking System (JPMorgan's TradeS.T.A.R.R.SM) to mitigate its operational risk.

JPMorgan's TradeS.T.A.R.R. is the first web-based application that measures, analyzes and statistically ranks the settlement efficiency among broker-dealers, within and across markets. It is a powerful, flexible application designed to help asset managers and broker-dealers analyze trade settlements and failures so they can better manage risks and contain costs.

"This is the tool that has been missing from our tool kit, complementing the traditional confirmation performance metrics used for measuring broker performance," said Domenic Costanza, head of trade operations in Europe for Barclays Global Investors. "JPMorgan's TradeS.T.A.R.R. is a cost effective product that will help us improve our decision making process and alleviate operational risk due to trade failure--a capability of utmost importance especially with today's market volatility."

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Banco BBA Creditanstalt S.A., and Ascent Financial Technologies, a partner of Financial Engineering Associates (FEA), have completed the first customization of FEA value-at-risk (VaR) technology for the Brazilian financial markets.

Ascent now offers FEA's VaR software programs with direct support for major Brazilian financial instruments.

"With the FEA VaR delta technology BBA traders can rapidly choose candidate operations that optimize our hedging strategies by fully exposing the VaR and cashflow impacts of any transaction," said Enio Bonafe Mendona de Souza, director of risk management at BBA. "The FEA VaR system gives us very fast performance, it allows intra-day VaR estimates, robust stress testing, and multiple reporting options."