Tuesday October 7 9:00 AM EDT
Company Press Release
Infinity Financial Technology Announces the Infinity 7.0 Suite of Enterprise Applications for Financial Risk Management
New Products Provide: - Immediate Off-the-Shelf Functionality - Reduced Time to Market for New Financial Products - High Performance and Scalability
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Infinity(R) Financial Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:INFN), a leading provider of enterprise applications for financial risk management, today announced Infinity 7.0. A suite of adaptable applications, Infinity 7.0 addresses the complete risk management workflow, from transaction processing to decision support. Infinity 7.0 is designed to solve the increasingly rigorous business requirements of global organizations that manage financial assets, including banks, fund managers, and corporate and government treasuries.
The announcement was made at the annual Infinity Global User Group Meeting in Washington, D.C. Meeting attendees represent the world's premier financial institutions, including ABN AMRO, Bank of Montreal, The Chase Manhattan Bank, Deutsche Bank, National Australia Bank and Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale.
''Infinity's product direction is founded on the belief that if an organization can accurately quantify risk, it can take risks that are better informed and more profitable,'' said Roger A. Lang, chief executive officer, Infinity Financial Technology, Inc. ''Infinity 7.0 represents a milestone for Infinity and our customers. For the first time ever, each function in the financial risk management workflow is addressed by integrated, best-of-breed applications. Infinity is unique in its ability to unify transaction processing at the level of the trader and back-office professional with decision support throughout the enterprise, using a common architecture.''
Adaptable Risk Management Applications for Off-the-Shelf Functionality
Infinity 7.0 risk management applications work together seamlessly to provide immediate functionality while offering a high degree of adaptability to meet a customer's unique requirements:
* Infinity Market Simulator (TM)
-- Enables risk managers and trading managers to quantify risks
consistently using a broad range of methodologies.
* Infinity Limit Manager (TM)
-- Enables risk controllers to allocate flexible limit structures and
monitor utilizations and breaches of limits in real time.
* Infinity Derivatives(TM)
-- Provides a straight-through processing system for Interest Rate
derivatives.
* Infinity FX (TM)
-- Offers a straight-through processing system for FX & FX derivatives.
* Infinity FinEx (TM)
-- Allows the trader to structure and price complex transactions in
Microsoft Excel(TM) -- taking advantage of third-party analytics
-- and to integrate these transactions seamlessly into the Infinity
system.
Reduced Time to Market for New Financial Products
Financial instruments follow a typical lifecycle: they are initially lightly-traded in low volumes with high profit margins, then subsequently heavily-traded with lower margins as they mature. Traditionally, there has been limited support in existing trading systems to manage complex structured transactions early in their lifecycle. Infinity FinEx allows traders to model a new instrument in Excel using functions provided by the Fin++ Class Library, and then process and manage it in Infinity 7.0. Thus the trader can combine the flexibility of Excel with the efficiency and security of an integrated system.
Performance and Scalability
Infinity 7.0 allows customers to make simultaneous use of multiple single-processor machines on a network, symmetric multi-processor (SMP) machines or a combination of both. This represents a non-intrusive way to accelerate performance without modifying or optimizing the underlying Infinity software.
Infinity's Risk Management Strategy
''Today's product announcement is significant in the context of an important market trend, namely, the explosive growth in volume, diversity and complexity in financial instruments,'' said Till M. Guldimann, Infinity's vice chairman. ''This growth has led to massive decentralization of risk taking in financial institutions. Risk takers need to be close to the markets and clients for the instruments they trade. As a consequence, trading and risk-taking decisions have been delegated to the periphery of the organization. This decentralized risk-taking activity requires controls.''
Mr. Guldimann continued: ''Infinity believes there is currently a misconception in the industry that good risk management is equivalent to reporting risk positions from the traders up through the organization's hierarchy to a chief risk manager for consolidation and risk reporting to management and the regulators. Central control and independent oversight are seen as the panacea for recent mishaps in risk management. At Infinity, we have a different view: effective risk management is not about central control and limiting aggregate risks but about optimizing the risk/return characteristics in each business unit and for the total business in the aggregate. To be efficient, decentralized risk-taking organizations need to have very clearly defined lines of authority, tight controls and sophisticated performance evaluation at every level.''
Risk management takes place at every single management level through three activities:
Authorize: Define who is allowed to trade what and how much, i.e., risk limits.
Control: Track the activity, i.e., outstandings against limits.
Evaluate: Compare results (profitability) in the context of the risks taken.
The aggregate amount of risk in an organization needs to be limited in relation to its capital. Therefore, the overall profitability of a risk-taking organization depends greatly on the efficient internal allocation of risk limits. Risk takers, risk-taking units and businesses which tend to generate high profits in relation to risks taken should be authorized higher limits than others.
ACE (Authorize - Control - Evaluate) is the underlying philosophy driving the design of Infinity 7.0. Organizations should implement ACE consistently at every level: from individual traders in a trading unit to business groups in a division. Consistency requires a common language to describe limits, outstandings and results across a diverse range of activities. Without such a common language it is impossible to compare and to authorize limits to optimize the aggregate profits in the context of limited aggregate risks.
Availability
Infinity 7.0 is currently in limited release and is scheduled for general availability in December 1997 on Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and popular UNIX operating environments.
Infinity Financial Technology, Inc.
Infinity Financial Technology, Inc. develops and markets enterprise software solutions for financial risk management. These solutions address the rigorous business requirements of global organizations that manage complex financial assets, including banks, fund managers, and corporate and government treasuries. The company was founded in 1989 and completed its initial public offering in October 1996. It offers global sales and support through offices in New York, Chicago, San Diego, Toronto, Santiago, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney. Business Week recently recognized Infinity as #7 on its top 100 list of ''Hot Growth'' public companies in the U.S. Infinity's headquarters can be reached at 640 Clyde Court, Mountain View, CA 94043. Tel: 415-940-6100; Fax: 415-964-9844;
Infinity, Infinity Market Simulator, Infinity Limit Manager, Infinity Derivatives, Infinity FX, Infinity FinEx, Infinity Platform, Fin++ and the Infinity logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Infinity Financial Technology, Inc. in the United States and foreign countries. In Australia, Infinity Financial Technology, Inc.'s product is known as Montage. Inf.64
SOURCE Infinity Financial Technology, Inc. |
