CheckFree Hires Global STP Specialist as Executive Director of Business Development
Wednesday September 3, 10:04 am ET
-- The appointment of Martin Pearce, a veteran of STP implementations at UK's Morgan Stanley Asset Management and others, highlights the importance of automated reconciliation technology to global STP strategy --
ATLANTA and LONDON, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CheckFree Financial and Compliance Solutions (CFACS), a business unit of CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR - News), today announced the appointment of Martin Pearce to the position of Executive Director of Business Development. Pearce, who spent the majority of his career working for London-based financial institutions, brings to his new position in-depth expertise in the strategic direction and the implementation of global Straight Through Processing (STP) programs within the securities industry.
A well recognized pioneer in the development of global STP standards, Pearce has been a member of the ISITC executive committee, co-representative for the UK Securities Market Practice group, a member of the global executive SMPG committee and the GSTPA fund manager's council. Currently a co-chair of the U.S. Omgeo advisory board and active participant in ISITC in the U.S., Pearce is a frequent conference speaker and published author of industry articles on STP and related topics.
Three years ago, Pearce's achievements at MSAM drew the attention of US- based Massachusetts Financial Services Management (MFS) Investments, where he was invited to head up the firm's new STP initiative. "Now of course," explains Pearce, "many organizations have STP so today's challenge is to resist complacency and continue working towards the next level." Current key issues include reducing trade settlement times, developing virtual matching utilities and the ongoing quest for global STP standards. "Essentially it's about achieving efficiencies, such as settling trades in minutes, not days."
Much of his expertise in trade settlement technology, STP and the development of standards, was gained at Morgan Stanley Asset Management (MSAM). Born and educated in the UK, Pearce worked in MSAM's London offices for ten years, managing numerous groups including trade processing and database management. For the last three years of his tenure, Pearce was responsible for spearheading the organization's global STP program across offices in London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo. "MSAM has always been recognized as a technology leader. Being an early adopter of global STP meant that we faced numerous challenges on the journey from a manual environment to a fully automated one. This included getting all the stakeholders on board, handling disparate platform and messaging standards and dealing with the standalone trade and payment processing methodologies of different countries. In fact, several analysts told us our environment was so complex they doubted the project could be done." Asked what he thought was his finest moment at MSAM, Pearce has no hesitation in replying: "The day we went live and proved the impossible could be achieved."
For the first time his career, Pearce is now on the other side of the desk, moving from the role of technology user to supplier and solution adviser. Said Pearce, "I'm now in a position to help bring together users, product developers and technology partners in order to create solutions that will advance the interests of the entire worldwide STP industry. I know the complex issues facing CIOs and am now in a position to help develop and provide some core solutions. I believe that advanced reconciliation technology, such as CFACS' enterprise automated CheckFree RECON-Plus Frontier(TM) suite, and related tools for processes such as exception management, are vital to the workability of any STP program."
"We are extremely pleased to have someone of Martin's calibre and experience joining our team," said Mark Zill, senior vice president and general manager of CFACS. "This relationship is a marriage of strengths, matching our 30 years of experience in developing reconciliation and compliance solutions with Martin's broad-based knowledge of the settlement process and cross-border STP requirements. It's a combination that promises major benefits for our customers. . ."
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