News

Solutions

Successes

Partners

About us


Successes
	Alasia Investment
	Clariden Bank
	Intesa Sanpaolo
	Maerki Baumann
	Pioneer Investments
	Rüd Blass, Privatbank
	Zurich Financial Services

Enabling Outsourcing

Maerki Baumann (http://www.mbczh.ch), a leading independent Zurich Private Bank offers high-quality services to wealthy individuals, asset managers and institutional investors. The banks long-term success has been built on customer care which is maximized through professionalism, flexibility and quality. Maerki Baumann has identified technological leadership as a crucial ingredient in its service and success. While facing increased global competition in private banking and trading, they have set electronic trading and a high level of STP (straight-through-processing) as a strategic success factor. Maerki Baumann offers banks, asset managers and other financial service providers a fully functional electronic trading operation - including all required interfaces. Clients who avail of this service benefit from superior service with very low transaction costs. Maerki Baumann's constantly strives to maintain its fist class image both in Switzerland and internationally.

The Problem

Maerki Baumanns' primary focus is on the service that it can offer to its customers. In order to further increase the efficiency and quality of that service, they have decided to outsource forex trading on behalf of their customers to UBS Warburg. The bank is using IBM's OTMS (order transport and management system) to manage its orders. The interface to the OTMS system is built on the FIX protocol suite of messages - whereas the interface to UBS Warburg is based on XML. The bank needed a solution that would allow them to benefit from OTMS while using the XML feeds of UBS Warburg.

The Solution

"A careful examination of the INCENTAGE Middleware Suite has shown that it complies with our high standards. With INCENTAGE we have a highly motivated team on the supplier side that provides us with excellent support which we consider very important."

Maerki Baumann & Co AG, René Hertach, Mitglied der Direktion

The Java based INCENTAGE Middleware Suite is highly business oriented and thus provides the flexibility needed to address these issues. Using the Rules Studio of INCENTAGE, a solution was created which allows requests, orders and quotes to be sent electronically to UBS Warburg and in turn allows the receipt of confirmations and quotes. INCENTAGE was also used to ensure that connections are activate and available by controlling heartbeats with UBS Warburg. As well as controlling the information flow, INCENTAGE straight-through-processing (STP) covers aspects such as security and reliability. It controls all involved components and their connections, raising alerts if something goes wrong and automatically initiating action to ensure proper operation while maintaining transactional safety. It does all of this while requiring the minimum of administrational effort.

Background

The central requirement of Maerki Baumann is that it can focus on the efficient management of its core activities. Excellent interface management makes this possible.

INCENTAGE is used to implement the interface between OTMS and UBS Warburg using MQSeries over SSH to guarantee message delivery. Rules have been specified within INCENTAGE to ensure that the messages are correctly formatted in the FIX standard when communicating with OTMS and in XML when communication with the UBS Warburg system. INCENTAGEs' heavy investment into features such as ease of navigation and automatic generation of documentation of the conversion rules has paid off in projects such as this. As well as facilitating the intuitive entry of rules, the software provides navigation, documentation and automatic comparison of versions of the rules. INCENTAGE has also developed a comprehensive project methodology. As a result of using the methodology, the risks associated with a quick installation and implementation were always fully under control. The project lasted just a few days and was always fully documented thanks to the integrated INCENTAGE quality management processes. Thus, communication with the development and testing departments was always accurate and under control. The most important success factor was the highly motivated and competent team which was formed quickly from the experts of Maerki Baumann and INCENTAGE.

For more information please contact us.

Download pdf version of this success story.

Download german version of this success story.