Mutual fund groups, pension fund managers, and bank trust areas all use afs:TRADE to check compliance, write tickets, and monitor portfolios in real time. A typical system includes the following key features:

Basic information about transactors, portfolios, counter-parties, CUSIPs, and issuers (if you trade money market securities). If you have multiple desks and sub-accounts, no problem! You can assign a portion of a portfolio's assets to several different desks, depending on your needs.

 

Real-time positions. Portfolio holdings can be searched and sorted by a wide variety of characteristics. It's easy to review all your positions for a single portfolio, trading desk, CUSIP, or issuer. 

 

Compliance monitoring before the trade. The afs:TRADE system uses a unique, field proven process to keep you up-to-the-minute about your compliance status. Before you commit to a trade, you can use a "what if?" screen to find out instantly how much room you have in all of your funds, based on all compliance rules they are subject to. CUSIP and issuer attributes, approved issuer and counter-party lists, exempt baskets, maturity and settlement restrictions -- they're all in there! We guarantee full compliance with SEC 2a-7 regulations. And you can add an unlimited number of new rules to the system at any time without reprogramming. Many customers tell us that compliance monitoring is the jewel of the system. 

 

One-touch ticket creation. Once you are ready to sell (or buy more of an existing security), just pick the position, click Buy or Sell, and fill in the price/yield, quantity and counter-party. The afs:TRADE system does all the rest of the work for you! (Of course, if you need to override other fields, that option is available.) Depending on how you delegate authority in your firm, portfolio managers and/or traders may participate in this process. If your business is more complex, with multiple lots and sub-accounts, afs:TRADE can handle that, too.

 

Special money market features. AFS specializes in money market securities, so our ticket processing routines are designed to handle CUSIP-based and issuer-based trades with equal ease. Start with an issuer, and the system will build a new CUSIP record for you. Book a repo trade, and the system will calculate collateral coverage.

 

Real-time ticket blotters. Tickets begin in the front office, but they don't stay there. Many people throughout your firm are probably responsible for various phases of the order process. Fortunately, the afs:TRADE system can cover all of them. A sophisticated event monitoring system keeps everyone in the know when an order has reached a stage that requires their participation. In addition, all personnel can look up old trades by date, portfolio, counter-party, and/or CUSIP number. No more hunting through the file cabinets! 

 

Interfaces, interfaces, interfaces.  Nobody wants to reenter information, so the afs:TRADE system provides all kinds of straight-through processing options. On the input side, it can grab basic CUSIP descriptions on demand from the renowned KIS database. Once the trade is written, it can send the details to systems like the DTC and Impact. Our programmers can even write a custom interface to your existing back office system to ensure a smooth flow of information about new customers, CUSIPs, tickets, and positions. We'll even import your existing records to get you up and running quickly.