New investment products are appearing all the time, especially for the derivatives markets. Growing risks requires more-active monitoring of the markets. Realtime information is the markets' alpha and omega.

Solution benefits

• Daily up-to-date information on value of investment assets
• Automatic reporting to accounting and the authorities
• Less overlapping work
  
  

Etera is a Finnish mutual pension insurance company. For over 10 years, it has managed its investment assets using Digia Financial Systems products. The system has diversified as official requirements have grown and Etera's investment activities have broadened. Automated data gathering leaves more time for data interpretation.

Growing official requirements

Mutual pension insurance company Etera manages over five billion euros in investments. Over four billion worth are fixed interest and equity investments. Just as Etera has been making a clearer shift from index investments to active trading, stock market regulation has increased. In addition, new investment products continuously demand more from information systems.

To manage securities, Etera has used solutions from the Digia Financial Systems product family since the end of the 90s. Before then, an inhouse system took care of debenture investment assets. With the arrival of equity investments and the euro, a more powerful, comprehensive system was needed. Samstock, which later joined the Digia Financial Systems product range, was chosen as such system.

Data more up-to-date

The installed system is used to handle Etera's investment asset back-office functions, from logging transactions to reporting and bookkeeping. Asset item values are monitored daily.

Securities investments are divided into equity investments, derivatives, money market instruments and debentures.

Information required for bookkeeping goes straight to bookkeeping; account balancing has its own interface. Report drafting can be automated using Report Manager – reports can be chosen to meet official or inhouse bookkeeping requirements.

In autumn 2011, the Bloomberg market information service was integrated into the package as an outsourced service. This provides closing prices of shares, valuation reports, key figures and risk evaluations, plus information on company developments such as stock, splits and share issues. As a result, information is much more up to date. Before, some data had to be fetched manually from multiple sources.

Automation continues

"New investment products are appearing all the time, especially for the derivatives markets. Growing risks requires more-active monitoring of the markets. Realtime information is the markets' alpha and omega. Information is continually being analysed and combined more flexibly. This line of work would be hard to imagine without a full, reliable information system," explains Maarit Javanainen, in charge of managing Etera's securities. "I feel sure that automation will continue."

Next up for Etera is automation of settlement, using Digia's Settlement Manager. Settlements will be automated in order to eliminate duplicate work. Information on completed trades will be handled with a single entry, covering both Etera and the custodian bank.

"The stock markets are very lively. Naturally, at Digia we value being involved in developing systems that boost our customers' business in a fast-moving environment," affirms Tommi Flink, a director at Digia.

Applied technology

• Digia Financial Systems
• Microsoft.NET
• Crystal Reports
• SQL Server