Raymond James renews partnership with GBST and upgrades its Syn~ post-trade solution
Raymond James has renewed its existing contract for a further term and successfully completed its upgrade to the most advanced version of GBST’s middle-office post-trade solution, Syn~TAC. A GBST client for more than seven years, the US multinational independent diversified financial services company has already experienced more than a 40 percent increase in straight-through-processing (STP) by using GBST’s Syn~TAC. With its recent version upgrade, the firm expects to benefit beyond its current STP capability to even further lower cost per trade.
Raymond James manages approximately $1.18 trillion in client assets, $7.6 billion of shareholder’s equity, and has over 8,400 financial advisors. The firm’s recent upgrade of Syn~TAC will enable it to offer an even greater level of automated post-trade allocation service to buy-side clients than previously available, with greater efficiency and cost benefits as well. It will facilitate the management of exceptions across multiple Electronic Trade Confirmation (ETC) providers to further enhance STP times with limited user interaction required.
Raymond James will benefit from improved data maintenance services to meet regulatory data retention requirements, while simultaneously sustaining the service levels expected by the sales and trading support personnel.
The new release of Syn~TAC also allows Raymond James to provide an alternative Financial Information eXchange (FIX) messaging service to its client base, as the DTCC moves away from and retires its antiquated Oasys ETC services. Syn~TAC will accommodate DTCC’s CTM step-out* trading functionality to ensure Raymond James’ client base can migrate before the October 2021 deadline.
Denis Orrock, Head of Capital Markets at GBST, said, “We are thrilled to continue our long-standing relationship with Raymond James and extremely pleased with how smoothly the upgrade proceeded. The entire process was performed remotely by our global teams due to Covid-19 restrictions. There is a range of additional features and functionality that Raymond James will be able to utilise for the benefit of its business and clients.”
Susan Horn, Managing Director, Global Equities and Investment Banking at Raymond James, said, “Upgrading to Syn~ 3.3 was key to further advancing the automation function in our middle-office environment. We were delighted with the professionalism displayed by GBST’s upgrade team and their deep expertise and domain knowledge.
“We commenced the upgrade on a Friday after the US markets closed and were ready when the first trade was processed from our London office early Monday morning. As a result of the upgrade, we will now be able to accommodate future trading volumes in excess of our substantial growth over the past two years.”
Syn~TAC is GBST’s automated middle-office trading solution that processes trades up to the point of clearing across multiple asset classes. It features intelligent tools to manage exceptions, correct errors, and enrich trades with settlement and reporting information.
