FIA Tech digitizes ‘Give-Up’ agreements, launches product database
FIA Technology Services, a subsidiary of FIA, announced two partnerships in October with technology companies, one to further digitize FIA Tech's Electronic Giveup Solution (EGUS) and another to launch a product reference database.
With help from eClerx, a global business process outsourcer headquartered in Mumbai, and Semantic Evolution, a technology startup that uses artificial intelligence to extract data from unstructured documents, FIA Tech has developed a virtual central data warehouse that should make tracking these thousands of give-up agreements cheaper and easier.
FIA Tech’s updated EGUS streamlines give-up processing by creating a central, digitized repository for agreements. Executing brokers will be able to use EGUS as a low cost, scalable solution to implement electronic brokerage rate schedules and improve brokerage settlement processes for their firm.
FIA Tech executives say that EGUS 2.0 will cut out costs in the industry by reducing the need for manual reconciliation, which has been a slow and expensive process.
Over 20,000 agreements that FIA Tech had previously stored in PDF format have now been entirely digitized. The firm was able to digitize each agreement for about $30, far less than the $200 or more that executing brokers had previously estimated the job would require, according to Nick Solinger, President of FIA Tech.
Solinger estimated that Semantic’s role in reading and organizing the data was responsible for roughly half the cost savings the EGUS project achieved. The London-based company startup was honored as one of the FIA’s five top innovators of the year at the 2016 FIA Innovation Pavilion.
EGUS is just the first project of many projects that FIA Tech plans to undertake with eClerx to streamline many data and operational issues faced by the industry, according to Solinger. “This arrangement with eClerx gives FIA Tech a much deeper bench to provide better service for our users at very low cost,” he said.
In a separate development, FIA Tech has partnered with JDX Consulting to launch a global reference database for exchange-traded derivatives. The database includes industry-wide contract-level specifications, including symbols, official contract descriptions and currency information. The database is available at no charge to all FIA Tech Brokerage Services subscribers.
