Last week I had the pleasure of visiting and speaking at the Contigo User Group meeting held at the The Oval cricket ground. The event was well organized and very useful to get a catch up from Contigo as well as mingle with several old colleagues and many industry people. Additionally, it’s amazing how well the day starts when it begins with a bacon and ketchup sandwich! I had never been to The Oval and quite honestly, I was impressed by its size. I had no idea so many people liked to watch cricket.
Something of a theme developed early on in terms of the sessions that I visited and that was the European regulations. It began with the keynote delivered by Dan Smith, head of Market development at Trayport, who covered the current situation viz a viz the regulations and it continued with a fascinating session that looked at what Contigo had done to its enTrader product to cater for the regulations. Contigo are in the process of adding all the data items needed to allow clients to fulfill their EMIR and REMIT reporting obligations with many of these being demonstrated live at the User Group. In fact, the solution is so comprehensive that Contigo are also set to offer it as a reporting platform. enTrader can pick up trading data from third-party systems and spreadsheets for example, ready that data for reporting and then send it to the Trade Repository and handle all of the resulting messaging in the case of EMIR. The message was loud and clear – Contigo’s enTrader software is ready for EMIR and REMIT when it comes to trade reporting.
Contigo also showed us quite a bit of progress in terms of working with Trayport. EnTrader can import Trayport deals and enrich them with all associated and relevant data automatically and they have set up many products so that everything is out of the box. This includes not just UK products but for all European markets too (this is apparently in process and should be completed by yearend or so) making the software Europe-ready. Contigo is also in the process of adding via a partner, some basic VaR and other risk calculations as well. The company already partners with Lacima on full-blown and comprehensive risk management.
The day was, of course streamed, and I did not get the chance to go to all the streams. However, later in the afternoon, I was able to take in the enPrice demonstration and user presentation from Bord Gais who appear to be well pleased with their implementation of the retail quotation engine product.
I also spoke and discussed trends impacting E/CTRM software with an emphasis on…. yes – you guessed it… European regulation. It seemed to go down quite well but not as well as those bacon sandwiches – of which I can now only dream…..
