Meritsoft, a Cognizant company, announced the integration of Taskize’s collaboration and workflow functionality into its cross-asset Trade Tracking and Exception Manager (TTEM) to enable faster query resolution in a drive to minimize trade settlement fails.
As the market prepares for the go-live of T+1 in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Argentina at the end of May, the shortening of the settlement cycle for equities and bonds will reduce the time to match by up to 80%. This puts greater pressure on market participants to successfully match trades in order to meet the settlement deadlines and avoid the associated costs of fails.
Meritsoft’s TTEM tracks the entire trade lifecycle to provide near real-time trade matching and settlement status updates, enabling users to identify at-risk trades and take necessary action internally or externally to ensure timely matching. The Taskize platform is used by more than 600 banking and financial firms in more than 88 countries and provides a secure workspace that brings financial operations professionals together to resolve queries. With this integration – as demonstrated live at Taskize Forum 2024 in London recently – operations teams will be able to rapidly address issues that might otherwise lead to failing trades.
Users of TTEM can initiate a trade settlement query in the TTEM Trade Window, simultaneously creating a secure workspace – known as a Bubble – in the Taskize platform. The Taskize platform’s Smart Directory will connect the TTEM user to the most appropriate individual for resolving the query at the counterparty. As a result of Taskize’s connectivity, TTEM users can interact with counterparties regardless of the communication tool they use without leaving the system.
Utilizing the AI-enabled features of TTEM, users will also benefit from the automated creation of Taskize Bubbles. Based on pre-defined rules, TTEM AI uses historical trade matching and settlement data combined with current live lifecycle statuses to initiate queries in Taskize without user input, further increasing the efficiency of the platform.
Daniel Carpenter, CEO of Meritsoft, said in a statement: “The process of manually identifying and intervening to prevent or resolve a failed trade takes significant operational resources and all too often relies on a web of email and phone communication. In the context of T+1 and growing pressure to resolve settlement issues quickly, the integration of Taskize into our trade tracking and exception management system is a significant step in helping market participants to streamline their settlement processes.”
James Pike, interim CEO of Taskize, said in a statement: “Financial markets are becoming more complex and interconnected; as trading volumes increase, new regulations are implemented, and new markets rise to the fore. In this context, interoperability of post-trade systems is essential. Our integration with Meritsoft is a testament to our commitment to connecting front and back-office teams, enabling the smarter allocation of work to speed up time consuming manual exception resolution tasks and, as a result, navigate the increasingly complex market environment.”