Archive for the ‘Special Features’ Category

Investment bankers can always think up new product features faster than custodians and standards bodies can come up with message standards for them. That was the conclusion of a panel on corporate actions at SWIFT’s Sibos conference last year in Copenhagen. And as long as they can make money, the bankers are happy ... Full story

It has been a year since Ed Barrie, senior product manager for Treasury at Microsoft Corporation, stood with SWIFT CEO Leonard Schrank at SIBOS in Copenhagen to announce that Microsoft would be using SWIFT for financial messaging with its banking partners. Since then, progress has been a little slower that he had anticipated ... Full story

During the ACORD insurance conference in May, Insurity, a ChoicePoint company, announced a multi-year strategic alliance with Microsoft that would combine Insurity’s industry expertise with Microsoft’s .NET platform architecture and the Windows Server System. “A software product for insurance is never complete. We always evolve with the ... Full story

For the second year in a row, Windows in Financial Services is honoring ten companies – five financial firms and five vendors – that have found innovative ways to harness the strength, flexibility and reliability of Microsoft technology. Microsoft has made a $20 billion R&D investment over the past few years ... Full story

With compliance spending expected to reach US $28 billion in 2007, financial institutions need to make sure that their compliance efforts are not just a necessary evil but an investment for the long term. There are a range of business benefits to be gained from sound compliance practices, including streamlined business processes, quality ... Full story

What do portfolio managers do to retain existing clients, attract a greater share of their investment funds, and draw in new clients? They look for tools that will help them beat the market averages. At Gustafson, Baxter Financial Services, Inc. in Columbus, OH, Bruce Baxter is using a number of market timing indicators in ... Full story

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer came to New York in mid-March with Microsoft’s new “People-Ready” marketing campaign, he was making a case for the importance of people to a company’s success, and the importance of software in making people productive. Over the next year, Microsoft plans to launch more new software releases than it ... Full story

Not just another pretty interface: Market data, historical records, customer information. These are just a few of the ways that information is at the center of the investment banking business. Building new derivatives, creating innovative structured products, compliance, sales, decision support for traders, risk management – these are just a few of the ways that technology collects, stores, analyzes, structures and delivers data to the people ... Full story

Excel 2007 and Excel Services – New Tools Bring Spreadsheets into Compliance Excel spreadsheets are so flexible and powerful that companies, especially financial firms, have greatly expanded their use across the enterprise. In financial services, Excel is widely employed to develop new trading products, to fill the gaps between applications and help banks close their books at the end of a reporting period, and ... Full story

Mike Gilkey joined Avanade from Accenture five and a half years ago, when the company was formed through a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft aimed at providing consulting and implementation services for applications running on the Microsoft platform. Avanade, which launched in 2000 just after the peak of the technology boom, struggled ... Full story