One of our institutional investment managers has expressed a need to calculate fees for a group of accounts in a household, but with a slight twist. The functionality for grouping accounts is native to Electra Billing—the added twist being the need to calculate sub-groups within the household in a specific sequence and furthermore, ensuring that specific accounts bear the brunt of the lower tier fees. Utilizing the Subset & Floor functionality within Electra Billing, our client was able to satisfy the new request, and calculate the accounts in the exact sequence needed. This functionality is referred to as Stacking & Tiering, which is also native to Electra Billing. The client was thrilled to learn they could accommodate this request seamlessly and without the need for any special development.

(Doug Fritz, Product Manager — Electra Billing)

Electra Wins Best Reconciliation Solution in the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards 2016

An Electra Reconciliation client called the help desk this week concerned about not being able to match fixed income transactions.  In this case the bank sends principal and interest as separate transactions and the clients accounting system only produces one record containing both values.  This is a common occurrence for reconciliation clients and we resolve this issue by helping the client configure the application to split manager side transactions, thus enabling a successful match. (Steve Weinberg, Director of Support)

Electra Wins Best Reconciliation Solution in the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards 2016

An alternative investment client managing distressed credit-related investments in North America & Europe asked us if they could separate trade notifications that Electra Settlements sends to their brokers via email into two files, one with new trades, the other with revised and canceled trades.  The Electra Settlements support team walked the client through the customizable features of our Broker Direct notification module, configuring it to send separate reports for new and revised/canceled trades along with the ability to customize the subject line on each email notification going out to the brokers.

(Brian Prioleau, Manager of Settlement Solutions)

A Los Angeles based Hedge Fund manager was manually posting Spot FX transactions into their accounting system for restricted currencies.  Because Spot transactions in restricted countries are executed by the prime brokers, managers are relying on the bank data to update their accounting system.  Our Electra Reconciliation tool was able to fully automate their posting of the Spot Transactions. Based on the import specifications of the client’s accounting system, we built a custom extract. The exported report captured both legs of the Spot transaction and automatically routed them to the accounting system.

(Gabriel Khanan, Director of Consulting Services)

Recently, Electra added a new feature to the data dashboard which adds an auto-refresh to your complete view of file delivery. For Data customers, this dashboard gives you a single place to see the status of all your file deliveries. One very nice feature of Electra Data is that it supports continuous file delivery through the day. Unlike other providers which give you only a single shot at the data at some predetermined instant in the day, Electra supports files coming in at any time and follows up on them for you as part of the service. The dashboard gives you an easy way to see the status of you data all day long.

(Scott Rhodes, Chief Operating Officer)

An Electra Billing client called our support team today, concerned about the effect of the extra day in the 2106 leap year on the proration of fees. We were able to ease their concern by directing them to the Period Proration setting.  Period Proration controls how Electra Billing prorates fees to the correct fee due for the particular billing period.  Our Actual/Actual setting will always use the ‘actual’ number of days in a year thus always accounting for Leap years when they occur.  This selection provides the most accurate fee calculation while at the same time ensuring the dynamic nature of leap years is accounted for.

(Doug Fritz, Product Manager — Electra Billing)

Starting a new year provides a great opportunity for reflection. Here at Electra Information Systems, we are happy to report that 2015 provided a record-breaking year for us, with an increasing number of financial institutions relying on us and our products to make sure that their operations run smoothly.

Since its inception in 1998, Electra has been guided by a single, client-driven principle – efficient processing is critical to success. As the market continued to increase in complexity in 2015, demand for automated post-trade operation and robust data management solutions quickly rose, increasing Electra’s client base by 20%. While all of Electra’s solutions contributed to its growth in 2015, particular strength was evident in Electra’s reconciliation solutions and subscriptions to its extensive data network. The platforms that Electra provides are vital in the financial services industry with investors, fund administrators, custodians, insurance firms and other buy-side clients using these products to their advantage.