Financial Technologies Forum LLC News Feeds http://www.ftfnews.com/ After years of working together on finance transformation projects assisting large companies in the successful implementation of BlackLine software, Deloitte and BlackLine Systems have formalized a strategic business alliance.  Under the alliance, BlackLine and Deloitte, through Deloitte’s finance transformation practice, can continue to help large organizations automate their account reconciliation and financial close processes, and extract enhanced value from the BlackLine application.  Through the long-standing relationship with BlackLine and the technology the company provides, which drives efficiencies and automation via the BlackLine Financial Close Software Suite, Deloitte has provided high-value finance transformation projects for many Fortune 500 companies within various industries as well as educational institutions.  “As a technology leader in financial close automation tools, BlackLine provides a platform that can dramatically improve finance and accounting operations,” said Kyle Cheney, partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP and a leader in Deloitte’s core finance transformation practice.  “Our alliance with BlackLine supports our holistic view of people, processes and technology working together to help improve efficiency, governance, and the quality of financial reporting. Through the strength of our alliance with BlackLine, we have been able to successfully deliver quality projects for our clients by helping them better manage their close process through the efficiency and control that the BlackLine software supports.” Therese Tucker, chief executive officer, BlackLine Systems, adds, “We have a long track record of successful projects with Deloitte. They provide in-depth knowledge and hands-on advisory services in the implementation of the BlackLine software that help companies realize the tremendous benefits of an enhanced finance organization.”Through professional training on the BlackLine solution, which is designed to provide the skills necessary to implement BlackLine, many Deloitte advisors have become ‘BlackLine Certified Implementation Professionals.’ http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4831.html Southport Lane has reached a definitive agreement with Dallas National Insurance Holdings to acquire 100% of Dallas National Insurance Company, a Texas based property and casualty insurer, founded in 2005. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.While the transaction is subject to regulatory approval, it is anticipated to close early in the third quarter of this year.    “We are committed to providing additional capital to strengthen Dallas National and provide further security to policyholders,” said Glenn Weber, CEO of Southport Re, Southport Lane’s reinsurance affiliate.  “This acquisition underscores our long-term strategic interest in building a significant presence in the insurance sector. Dallas National enjoys a large pool of clients throughout the U.S., complementing our insurance and reinsurance operations.” http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4830.html The International Securities Exchange (ISE) today announced that order management functionality is now available in PrecISE Trade®, ISE's innovative, front-end execution system. PrecISE users are now able to route orders to other PrecISE users for execution. Additionally, PrecISE offers a new "parent/child" feature, or the ability to stage larger orders and divide them into smaller orders to better control order management and execution.   Boris Ilyevsky, Managing Director of ISE's options exchange, said, "Our latest PrecISE release represents a significant milestone for this product offering. PrecISE has moved beyond an execution-only interface with the introduction of these new order management capabilities. This is an important first step in our effort to deliver greater value and flexibility to users by enabling PrecISE to manage and support the entire lifecycle of an order."   ISE currently offers a two month fee waiver for new users of PrecISE, a leading tool designed to meet the needs of sell-side institutional trading desks. This comprehensive, front-end execution system supports all exchange order types and functionality, including complex orders, tied-to-stock options orders, crossing orders, and sweep functionality to access other exchanges. PrecISE users have access to real-time market data as well as ISE's Depth of Market Feed, the ISE Spread Book Feed and the ISE Implied Volatility and Greeks Feed. In addition, PrecISE offers risk management tools and flexible post-trade clearing and allocation functions.   http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4829.html Finger on the Pulse is our regular online survey that asks topical questions with multiple choice answers. It’s quick to respond to and we welcome submissions for questions from our readership.Check out what our readers had to say about how Dodd-Frank will impact the growth of their business'. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4828.html Finger on the Pulse is our regular online survey that asks topical questions with multiple choice answers. It’s quick to respond to and we welcome submissions for questions from our readership.Check out what our readers had to say about how much they care about the public's percetion of their firm. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4827.html Finger on the Pulse is our regular online survey that asks topical questions with multiple choice answers. It’s quick to respond to and we welcome submissions for questions from our readership.Check out what our readers had to say about how they rate the new CBR deadline for debt and options. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4826.html Paladyne Systems, Inc. today announced that it has extended its global capabilities in Paladyne Portfolio Master™, its combined order management and portfolio management solution, to help clients meet the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's (SFC) requirements for fund managers to disclose net short positions next month. The SFC Rules come into effect on June 18th and the first reporting day and reporting deadline will be June 22nd and June 26th, respectively. All fund managers holding short positions in Hong Kong stocks will be required to comply. Paladyne provides a centralized solution within Paladyne Portfolio Master to streamline these reporting requirements by automatically importing the universe of SFC's specified companies that require short sale disclosure and allows clients to generate daily monitoring reports, along with the weekly disclosure to the SFC on relevant short positions that fulfill the prescribed thresholds. Paladyne clients can also configure a rule to alert them when positions need to be disclosed. “Paladyne has built an institutional framework that positions investment firms to be able to respond to global rule changes and other regulatory and compliance requirements rapidly and on time,” said Sameer Shalaby, President, Paladyne Systems. “As a result, fund managers and service providers can fulfill their reporting obligations, including internal compliance and approvals checks, in a timely manner with minimal manual intervention.”Paladyne Portfolio Master combines multi-asset class Order Management System (OMS) and Portfolio Management System (PMS) functionality including broker-neutral trading, shadow accounting, and portfolio management in a single hosted solution. As part of Portfolio Master, Paladyne recently teamed up with Advise Technologies to create a solution to help its hedge fund clients meet the reporting obligations of the new SEC Form PF with a seamless enterprise-wide platform and comprehensive toolset. The Advise Enterprise server and Form PF Workbook have been integrated with the Paladyne Suite™ of products to provide an interactive web-based Form PF interface for clients, hosted in Paladyne ASP™ SAS 70 certified data centers in the US, Europe and Asia. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4825.html Authentication has become a critical component of digital commerce and grown in stature as the subject of updated Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidelines.Peter Tapling, CEO of Authentify, a global leader in telephone-based out-of-band authentication, and a panel of industry experts will bring to light the latest innovative uses of authentication technology in the fight against online payment and transaction fraud in a panel discussion at NACHA’s Internet Council meeting. The event, “Re-calibrating Your Expectations in the New ‘Real-World’ of Payments,” is being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 6 - 7, 2012.  Tapling will be joined by Andy Foote, vice president at Wells Fargo; Courtney Golden, senior manager of product management at eTrade; Mike Mulholand, director of fraud solutions strategy at Memento; and Joe Triano, principal of Joseph Triano Consulting.  The panel, “Leveraging Authentication Technologies to Protect Payments and Transactions,” will be presented on Wednesday, June 6th from 10:30-12:00 p.m.  The ecommerce and banking security experts will discuss balancing the use of various authentication approaches in light of customer experience and risk management goals.  They also will be discussing the myriad of options for authentication technology in the context of financial services and payment. “Because cybercriminals continue to become more sophisticated and organized, innovation in authentication solutions must evolve at a rapid pace,” said Tapling.  “During the panel we will be exploring how leaders in ecommerce and banking are tackling fraud by applying the latest advances in authentication technologies.  The panelists represent large banks, small banks, service providers and industry experts.  I expect the different points of view will be illuminating.”One important theme will be how to use mobile devices to get consumers more directly involved in monitoring their own accounts. This imperative was underscored by a recent survey showing that banks report their customers find fraud 82 percent of the time before the bank has even detected it. The panel will be discussing how a convenient always-on app on a smartphone or PC, such as Authentify’s new 2CHK app, enables the legitimate account owner to review and approve, or more importantly cancel if needed, transactions that are about to be processed against their accounts.  Authentify introduced telephone-based OOB authentication to the market and today has the most industry experience and expertise in deploying solutions and providing services. A proven and effective countermeasure recommended by federal authorities, regulators and leading consulting firms, OOB authentication is used by banks and ecommerce providers to protect against man-in-the-browser attacks designed to steal login credentials or hijack online sessions.  The capability to add OOB safeguards within multiple layer security models fulfills industry best practices as recommended by the FFIEC, Gartner Research, Inc., the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service and NACHA.Under the leadership of Susan Pandy, senior director for Internet and ecommerce at NACHA, the Internet Council works to advance electronic commerce over open networks by enabling digital business in a straight forward, secure and cost-effective manner. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4824.html Activ Financial appointed Todd Albright to the position of Senior Vice President and Head of Sales & Marketing for the Americas. Albright, who is focused on scaling ACTIV’s sales organization and further expanding its leading global reputation, brings two decades of business strategy and operational experience working with high-growth firms within the financial services technology industry. Albright’s addition to ACTIV’s senior management team is part of a broader expansion of ACTIV’s sales, client operations and product development organizations. The investment across each of ACTIV’s business units reflects the company’s momentum and intent to leverage its substantial enterprise content set, proven technology platform, and global distribution network to capture an increasing percentage of the $25B in annual global financial market data spend.“We continue to expand our leadership and resources in line the company’s growth opportunity,” said Frank Piasecki, President of ACTIV. “Todd’s expertise scaling enterprise sales and marketing organizations at fast growing companies will be a critical element to our immediate and long-term success serving global institutions with mission critical services.” Throughout his career, Albright has focused on enterprise sales, business development and operations, specializing in building and growing successful high-performance, consultative sales organizations in cloud computing, high-tech and financial services.  Most recently, he served as Vice President & Head of Global Financial Services Accounts for IntraLinks (NYSE: IL), where he was responsible for key contributions leading up to the company’s IPO in 2010.    Prior to IntraLinks, Albright was Senior Vice President of Sales & Major Accounts at Yext, which he joined following his tenure as Vice President of Sales at S1 Inc. (now ACI Worldwide).  He started his career as a performance improvement consultant with CAP Gemini.“I am excited to be joining ACTIV at a time of such great momentum and industry transition,” said Albright.  “The company’s proven enterprise market data solutions and strong customer base will serve as the platform for rapidly growing our sales and marketing efforts, as we look to capitalize on the shifting market data landscape, and capture a larger share of the industry.”  Albright holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy and German from Duke University. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4823.html Sapient Global Markets has implemented a strategic data management solution for Research Affiliates, significantly improving the sophistication of its data operations. The implementation provides Research Affiliates, a global leader in innovative investing and asset allocation strategies, with improved reliability of securities pricing, corporate actions and company fundamentals data received from multiple sources.Research Affiliates develops innovative solutions to pressing investment problems by focusing on strategy development and partnering with asset managers who distribute products based on these ideas.  At the close of March 2012, there were nearly $100 Billion in assets managed using Research Affiliates strategies around the world.The breadth and depth of its research means that Research Affiliates has complex data needs.  The company sought to make data available internally in a simplified and timely manner. Research Affiliates also sought to increase transparency and auditing of the third-party data used to prepare inputs for internal systems, such as the firm’s portfolio construction engine.  To achieve this goal, Sapient Global Markets drew upon its extensive knowledge of the data management landscape and experience implementing multiple custom and third party vendor packages. Sapient Global Markets also utilized its Global Distributed Delivery model to coordinate the initiative across multiple geographies and internal stakeholders, to ensure fast and efficient delivery of the project in line with Research Affiliates’ requirements.“It was difficult to find a firm with the depth of data management expertise required to handle such a complex undertaking within our tight deadlines,” said Mike Bowers, head of strategic operations and technology at Research Affiliates. “Sapient Global Markets had the experienced data specialists and global delivery capabilities necessary to devote resources to our initiative where and when we needed them. A tailored solution requires a tailored approach — which Sapient Global Markets was able to provide.”“Research Affiliates' innovative approach to investment management added a layer of complexity to a project that was aimed at completely transforming their data operations. This was a challenge our team was very well-suited to tackle given our experience implementing strategic data management projects,” said Gurdeep Batra, director at Sapient Global Markets. “This project completely transformed how Research Affiliates approaches and manages data and it’s been a real pleasure to be with them on this journey.” This initiative is live and included a number of phases, including an in-depth discovery phase to assess the data management challenges for the business, a vendor evaluation and selection phase, and an iterative implementation and migration phase before go-live. Sapient Global Markets continues to work with Research Affiliates to extend the platform’s benefits to further strengthen its differentiated value proposition to clients. http://www.ftfnews.com/News-more-4822.html