With the effects of the Asian financial crisis still reverberating in some corners of the region, smart companies know well the unpleasantness that can arise from large, rapid and unexpected movement of capital. Managing a companyÆs position in this volatile part of the world, not to mention keeping up with rapid technological change, is making treasury and risk management software systems an integral part of any large company.
The competition to serve this market need is increasing in line with the rapid technological changes. Many Asian-based software providers supply local big-name financial customers, but since the end of the crisis more and more US and European financial solutions companies are entering the Asian market. The latest to announce its presence in Asia is Trema, a European-based company with clients such as BMW Group, Ericsson and the South African Reserve Bank.
ôThe main reason for this move is that being a vendor serving the global financial markets, a serious vendor also has to be global,ö says Richard Lindblom, president of Trema Asia. ôWe already today have six clients in Singapore. This has also been a determining factor why we have selected to place our first Asian office there.ö
TremaÆs flagship product is Finance KIT an integrated front, middle and back office "backbone" system that provides treasury, risk and asset management. With the added functionality of eKIT and mKIT - online and mobile platform application suites respectively - Trema definitely has the technology to keep up with current e-trends.
ôFinance eKIT is an e-business platform that enables our clients to offer web based functionality to their clients. Typically, a corporate treasury center can offer the affiliates they serve a web-enabled tool for transaction management using secure Straight Through Processing (STP), and liquidity forecasting. We also have a web based product that allows a corporate to set up internal banking services including functionality such as multilateral netting, cash pooling, and intra-company payments,ö says Lindblom.
Finance mKIT is a WAP-based platform that allows mobile access to key figures as well as the ability to send alerts to a mobile device when specified events occur or limits are exceeded.
Locally based companies like Polaris, from India, and Singapore-based ARMS and CS Lucas now compete with global players such as Reuters and Algorithmics, making the market for treasury and risk management solutions a crowded place. Even with the technology to back up TremaÆs move into Asia, Lindblom says that the turnover of obsolete software will be the companyÆs major means of breaking into the local market.
ôThe average life-time of a system in an organization is said to be approximately seven years. Hence, one seventh of our market will renew their financial systems environment every year. This represents a substantial market opportunity for Trema and vendors like Trema,ö says Lindblom.
System turnover is likely to increase along with the exponential growth of e-business strategies, and risk and treasury solutions providers who can tap into the latest trends in technology will be well placed to take market leadership in Asia. Entering this market at a time when CEOs and CFOs are realizing that hi-tech is not just the domain of the IT manager should work in TremaÆs favour.
