Logica CLS Manager

The Logica CLS Manager (LCM) supports CLS member banks in the control, reconciliation and automation of their CLS business.  Integrating with the bank’s IT environment, applications and financial messaging systems, it enables the flexible delivery of information to all internal bank departments, including:

• foreign exchange
• treasury (liquidity and clearing)
• payments processing

as well as to external third party organisations including custodians/fund managers.

LCM is purpose-built for CLS member banks and provides service excellence internally as well as for third party users. The product provides a complete solution for CLS third party service providers who use this capability today to deliver the benefits of CLS settlement to their clients. LCM has been in use since CLS went live in 2002 and is today used successfully by a significant number of settlement members to support CLS connectivity. Some of the largest volume CLS members use LCM to submit and reconcile their trades.

Given the reality of ever-changing customer, regulatory and business requirements, LCM has been designed with the future in mind.  It complies with the Logica All Payments Solution (LAPS) - a component-based approach and methodology covering all participants in the payments value chain.  This means that Logica continues to develop the product in line with developing market needs, and to integrate it with related payments and treasury functions such as liquidity management.  Additional confidence comes from Logica’s comprehensive product support services to the LCM global client base.

The benefits of LCM

LCM offers banks a proven CLS management system with the ability to expand as CLS extends its value and reach.  From day one of CLS, LCM customers have been able to take advantage of new features and facilities as they were introduced.  LCM enables a bank to undertake the CLS implementation with confidence, delivering benefits including:

• daily CLS activity for trade submission and settlement with real time reconciliation for operations and settlement
• straight through processing of CLS activity while retaining full control for the bank’s control branch officers
• powerful tools to assist with trade matching
• an exception based model acting as a constant watchdog, alerting officers to all significant events and circumstances
• a powerful ‘drill down’ tool to investigate any event or problem using the complete transaction database and full event log
• a complete third party service solution, ready for immediate roll-out to clients
• options to integrate the CLS activity and data to other bank applications and supervisory management tools such as investigations, billing, treasury and liquidity forecasting
• management and delivery of CLS related information, in a fully secure and controlled environment, to control branch, trading branches, third party clients and others, via a simple browser interface,
• integrates Non Deliverable Forward and Option Premium with standard FX trade processing to provide information in a single system.

There is also a wide and active user base with a strong user group which takes an active role in defining product direction.

Addressing the challenges of CLS with Logica

A single controlling branch in the member bank provides CLS settlement services to numerous trading areas across the business, its affiliate organisations and often beyond to external third and even fourth parties.  Each of these entities has its own front, middle and back office policies and systems.  Overall, the control branch must ensure that it is able to submit and track trades and subsequently, to plan for liquidity requirements and ensure settlement of the CLS positions can be effected at the right time.

Specifically designed to meet the unique challenges imposed by CLS, a single LCM installation provides a comprehensive solution for a bank’s CLS business.  A modern, standard web-based architecture allows LCM to communicate easily with systems and people, irrespective of their geographical location.  The product provides online and message based CLS related information to all departments within a bank, its affiliates and third and fourth party clients.

LCM is designed to enable a bank to address CLS requirements within existing business flows and systems, with the minimum of disruption and change.  The system acts as the bank’s central repository of CLS specific data and processing, allowing existing bank systems to continue processing in the normal way.

Developed as an exception based system, LCM processes normal business events automatically, notifying business users of exceptions related to their area of responsibility.  All business significant events are recorded in the LCM database and a multi-dimensional set of enquiry functions is provided to enable users to view the detail of events and transactions in different ways.  A modern, technical architecture ensures that LCM integrates within clients’ hardware, software and security infrastructures.

LCM communicates with users and systems over IP networks, whether intranet, extranet or the Internet, in a secure, resilient and reliable way.  Being based on a highly scalable architecture means that LCM can adapt to client’s processing requirements as CLS develops to include further currencies, parties and instruments.

With a significant installed base Logica continues to develop the product in line with developing market needs, and to integrate it with related payments and treasury functions such as liquidity management.  LCM will support each of the new CLS strategic initiatives from Day 1.

For further information or to speak to one of our experts contact us at financial.services@logica.com