Options, the global financial technology managed services and IT infrastructure provider formerly known as Options IT, has struck a deal with the Technancial Company, maker of the Janus risk management platform.
The deal brings Technancial’s solution to more than 250 firms using managed services provided by Options. Those customers include investment banks, hedge funds and private equity groups.
"Adding sophisticated big data analytics in real time brings another strong compliance and business analytics component to an increasingly complex and fast moving environment," said Nigel Kneafsey, Options founder and chief executive officer, in a release.
Alex Lamb, head of business development americas and head of marketing for Technancial, explained that the alliance reflects the market’s growing comfort with outsourced risk management solutions.
"Five years ago people would typically say, 'Yeah, we're not going to outsource this, we're going to host it inside,'" Lamb said in an interview. "Today, the complexities of onboarding new systems within big organizations is so huge that we're seeing a lot of people simplly saying, 'If you can prove to me that your environment's safe, we'll outsource this to you.' "
Named for the two-faced gatekeeper god of beginnings and endings in ancient Rome, Janus solves for trade surveillance and risk management. One face in the co-located system observes orders and alerts other applications if it identifies a trade that should be stopped, deleted or flagged to risk managers for further review. The other face calculates margins on every account in real time, ensuring that traders do not have to wait until the end of the day for such information. If the instrument is not quoted on the exchange, the software pulls the settlement price and the current price of a similar instrument and extrapolates fair value from there, according to Lamb.
Lamb believes the two companies have a similar client base and a similar outlook. "I think we’ve always been very aligned from the get-go," he said. For Options clients, the alliance will be an advantage because companies "won't need to buy the hardware, earmark all the IT people, coordinate all the installs, uploads, and modifications because we'll take care of it. We'll just keep you informed."
