Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) have announced the addition of a new UK based asset manager to their growing client base. The license agreement is for use of the i-Recs reconciliation product to perform daily cash, daily holdings and month end NAV reconciliation. WWFS’s Importer data consolidation software is also being utilised by the client to standardise data files from multiple custodians ready for reconciliation against data from the Simcorp Dimension portfolio accounting system.

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) today announced the recent signing of a worldwide license agreement with a large Asia based commodities trader for the use of the i-Recs reconciliation solution.

WWFS completed the implementation on time and to budget for both i-Recs and the Importer data consolidation software at the client site where it will be used to reconcile trades and positions in multiple locations worldwide.

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) today announced the opening of a new support and development office near Oxford, UK.

Relationship Manager, Tom Wheatley, commented “This marks another important step in the growth of WWFS and demonstrates our commitment to high quality support and continued development of our flagship i-Recs product”.

A list of i-Recs and Importer interfaces has been added to the website, this list includes portfolio accounting systems and third party data suppliers such as prime brokers and custodians.

A white paper from Watson Wheatley Financial Systems focusing on data consolidation for asset reconciliation within hedge funds and long only asset managers has been added to the website.

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) today announced the release of i-Recs version 1.2 which marks a major step forward in automated portfolio reconciliation. Benefits of the latest i-Recs update include enhanced reporting, a fully customisable user interface and improved data export.

“The new functionality derives from a close collaboration with our clients. They are intensive users of our applications, importing, validating and matching thousands of transactions and balances on a daily basis and feeding adjustments back to internal systems or service providers.” says WWFS Director Duncan Wheatley. “These are expert users and their guidance has proven invaluable to us in setting design priorities to achieve greater levels of automation and accuracy.”

About i-Recs
i-Recs is a powerful reconciliation tool enabling matching of positions, balances, trades, cash flows and P&L between internal accounting systems and external service providers across all instrument classes. i-Recs completely solves margin account reconciliation for listed and OTC derivatives. i-Recs also handles full NAV reconciliation accounting for all differences in positions, balances, prices and exchange rates. i-Recs connects to a number of portfolio accounting systems and all of the main custodians, prime brokers and administrators.

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems today announced that it will change the name of its reconciliation system from T-Recs to i-Recs to eliminate any market confusion over similarly named products. The name change also reflects the extended reconciliation types now possible with the software beyond the original “transaction” reconciliation when the product was first launched.

Duncan Wheatley, Director at Watson Wheatley explains. “The previous name of our reconciliation product was nothing more than a holding name as we developed the product. Now that we are receiving international interest in our system we feel that the name needs to reflect the real flexibility of the system and avoids confusion with other products in the reconciliation space”.

Watson Wheatley also announced that it now has over twenty data interfaces to well known prime brokers, custodians and clearers as well as import and upload functionality with popular portfolio accounting systems through i-Recs’ companion product Importer.

i-Recs is an automated reconciliation system which matches positions, balances, trades, cash flows and uniquely, P&L between internal systems and external service providers and across all instrument classes. i-Recs is the only system available that completely solves margin accounts reconciliation for listed and OTC derivatives. i-Recs also handles full NAV and market value reconciliation accounting for all differences in positions, balances, prices and exchange rates between the internal accounting system and records provided by the custodian or administrator.

An overview of the use of i-Recs and Importer to reconcile derivatives transactions at a hedge fund client.

Managing Director, Duncan Wheatley, gives his views about best practice for data aggregation and reconciliation products within the asset management industry.

Watson Wheatley, an emerging supplier of reconciliation products for asset managers, has extended its installation of i-Recs, its generic reconciliation system, for Genesis Investment Management LLP (GIML), a specialist in managing Emerging Markets equity portfolios, to automate daily cash reconciliation with its custodians.

“We are delighted that Genesis has chosen to extend its existing investment in our systems in this business critical area. This is a logical extension of the existing NAV reconciliation process already implemented, and provides fuller control over the maintenance of timely and accurate trade records within Simcorp Dimension, its portfolio accounting system” says Duncan Wheatley, director and founder of Watson Wheatley.

Sally Barr, Senior Manager, Portfolio Administration, and responsible for the implementation at GIML commented “We were very impressed with the implementation, and the flexibility of i-Recs. The delivered product has exceeded our expectations by catering for so many complex issues, and is providing significant time savings allowing focus to be exception driven. User response to the system has been very positive. While post live support required has been minimal, the response time to all questions raised has been excellent – and gives us great confidence for the future.”

Watson Wheatley has completed the integration of Importer, a data aggregation tool, within its reconciliation system i-Recs, and is shipping this with its latest version of the product. Permissioned users are now able to drag and drop third party reconciliation data files onto the i-Recs desktop to automatically parse and import the embedded data and invoke data validation, reconciliation and work flow routines that are standard within i-Recs.

This close integration also allows the extensive features of Importer to be harnessed directly by i-Recs to prepare exports to clients, custodians or other third parties, or to upload “approved corrections” to in-house systems. The rules engine within i-Recs can now drive the delivery of “reconciliation events” or “cases” either to other users of groups within i-Recs or, for external contacts, through Importer in any format required.

“Our goal of delivering front to back automation of the reconciliation process has moved significantly closer with the release of this new functionality” says director Duncan Wheatley. “Middle office staff can now focus fully on the key areas of break research, remedy and prevention confidently delegating the data retrieval and integrity checks to the system. This provides a marked improvement in operational efficiency a big step towards reducing operational risk.”

Watson Wheatley has extended its successful reconciliation tool i-Recs to handle NAV and market value reconciliation, offering a new level of control of all trading data to middle and back office operations. This is a natural and logical extension of the unique accounting framework of i-Recs and provides not only completeness of reconciliation covering trades, positions, balance, prices, exchange rates, but also the very powerful benefit of quantifying the value and influence of any break in commercial terms.

“The introduction of this functionality creates a brand new approach to asset reconciliation between disparate systems” says director and founder Duncan Wheatley. “It is logical to insist that a reconciliation between internal and external accounting systems holding different views of your funds and portfolios is handled by a system that speaks their language and is also an accounting system. This is what we have striven for with i-Recs, and with the introduction of NAV reconciliation we have reached our initial goal to provide a system that does just that.”

i-Recs uses the accounting logic initially to validate the continuity and integrity of data delivered; a prerequisite to successful reconciliation, and then throughout the subsequent matching, research and remedial processes to ensure the tight accounting relationship between the reconciliation data sets is maintained.

A clear benefit of this approach is the ability to measure the financial impact of all breaks whether a price, exchange rate, position or trade price on a margin traded instrument. This allows both the system and the users to prioritise remedial actions, provides a clear measure of operational risk to operations management and traders, and a pragmatic way of measuring quality of service provision.

Watson Wheatley has worked closely with its existing clients to deliver this functionality, and it is now fully deployed in a production environment.

Watson Wheatley, an emerging supplier of reconciliation tools and services to the asset management industry, has supplied its flagship products i-Recs and Importer to Genesis Investment Management LLP (GIML), a London headquartered specialist in managing Emerging Markets equity portfolios, to automate its custodian reconciliation processes.

“We are delighted that Genesis has chosen our products to help in this business critical area. The recent integration of Importer within i-Recs simplifies the custodian data delivery issue despite complex source formats, and the new NAV reconciliation module of i-Recs has given the client the control of the portfolio data they were looking for” says Duncan Wheatley, director and founder of Watson Wheatley.

Martyn Ryan, Partner at GIML says “i-Recs provides a valuable add on to our existing systems, providing a very flexible reconciliation tool which we anticipate will allow us a high level of automation, and replace existing manual processes. The quality of the management reporting suite is also very impressive.”

Sally Barr, Senior Manager, Portfolio Administration, and responsible for the implementation at GIML commented “For a project of this size, I was very pleased with how quickly the implementation was completed. I was impressed with the capacity of Importer – we deal with many custodians and various file formats, and Importer now allows each to be presented in a standard format – this is a very powerful attribute.”

The installation replaces existing in-house built systems and reconciles trade, position and cash balance data between Beauchamp Financial's FundManager accounting system and the client’s clearers. i-Recs™ was chosen by the hedge fund to utilise the product's strength in reconciling P&L as well as trade quantities and cash, and its flexibility to reconcile cash business to brokers, clearers and administrators. i-Rec™s’ unique approach to reconciliation ensures the integrity of all reconciliation data and processes by providing a dual accounting engine covering P&L, cash and holdings.

Capable of providing three-way reconciliation between the hedge fund's portfolio accounting engine, the prime broker and the administrator, the system provides a complete solution to hedge fund reconciliation.

The delivery of i-Recs™ to this significant player marks the introduction of a new level of operational control to a sector increasingly focused on managing risk to meet new regulatory and market challenges, and to ensure the accuracy of it's own date in search for alpha.

“We are delighted to be able to enter the market at this critical time with a product central to the operational needs of the alternative asset management business” said Duncan Wheatley, principal of Watson Wheatley.

“My experience as Head of Operations for large scale asset management and consulting to hedge funds has shown me the lack of real solutions in this critical area. We saw this gap six years ago and have built i-Recs™ to achieve very high levels of automation of matching, but more demandingly, the identification of the cause and finally the automated resolution of breaks. Only with this approach are you able to attain the real control you need whilst minimising the resources required to do this very difficult job.”

With 2012 drawing to a close Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS), the reconciliation specialists based in Oxfordshire, UK, reported the last 12 months to have been their most successful to date. The last accounting year saw profits up and turnover increasing by 53%; WWFS also expanded taking on new staff and invested heavily in the technology required for their next major release.

WWFS Director Duncan Wheatley commented “We are extremely pleased with the progress WWFS have made this year. We have seen a number of implementations successfully completed, record interest in our software and we have strengthened our development team to deliver the next version of i-Recs. With interest in our products at an all time high and strong financials we expect to expand further in 2013 both in the asset management market as well as with commodity traders”.

“We see the requirements of the markets changing. Even smaller hedge funds and asset managers are now requiring solid, fast and powerful reconciliation to satisfy auditors, clients and investors. Larger companies are demanding cost savings and consolidation of existing reconciliation processes. We are also seeing a clear rejection of indifferent service and costly ageing systems offered by some of the more well known vendors. We expect the trend away from traditional vendors to a new breed of reconciliation tools from bright innovative companies to accelerate” continued Duncan Wheatley.

A White Paper entitled Reconciliation Best Practice: What Asset Management Operations Really Need to Know has been added to the website. The paper, released in partnership with ByAllAccounts, covers best practices for asset managers, function requirements to support these processes and expert insight on data aggregation for scale, consistency and efficiency.

Watson Wheatley’s Director Duncan Wheatley will be attending the 7th Annual Reconciliations & Exception Management Conference in New York on 17th October 2012. To arrange a meeting or for further information on the i-Recs Reconciliation Solution please contact info@watsonwheatley.com.

A white paper by Duncan Wheatley, Director of Watson Wheatley Financial Systems, has been added to the website. This paper focuses on the operational control requirements of a buy-side securities trading firm with particular reference to post trade reconciliation.

The Ashmore Group has extended its use of the i-Recs reconciliation system to Ashmore EMM its Washington based investment firm.

Supplied by Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) i-Recs was initially implemented in Ashmore’s London Office during 2011 where it is used to reconcile positions, cash balances, trades and cash flows across the majority of funds and a wide range of asset classes.

“Having evaluated several reconciliation tools we were impressed by the close fit between i-Recs’functionality and our very specific reconciliation needs and were convinced this was the scalable and flexible reconciliation platform we needed to support a large and diverse business.” said Alex Duncan Head of UK Operations for Ashmore Investment Management.

WWFS Director Duncan Wheatley added “We are encouraged by the enthusiasm at Ashmore for our i-Recs product and delighted to see it is delivering the operational control our client wanted and also to see its use extended to other offices.”

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems (WWFS) are pleased to announce that Praxient Capital LLP, a London based hedge fund, have recently gone live with the i-Recs Reconciliation Software. i-Recs has been configured to perform daily cash and trade as well as month-end NAV reconciliation across a variety of asset classes and with a number of data providers.

Chris Fincke, COO of Praxient Capital LLP commented “The implementation of i-Recs has made a meaningful contribution to our control environment, improving the productivity of reconciliations between internal systems, administrator and counterparties in a cost effective manner. The WWFS team were both pragmatic and helpful throughout the process.”

Duncan Wheatley, Director of WWFS added “We are pleased to be able to welcome Praxient Capital to our growing client base and will continue to grow with them. i-Recs is highly configurable and is well placed to serve both current and future needs, with the added benefit of being able to add new interfaces in very short periods of time.”

A white paper by Duncan Wheatley, Director of Watson Wheatley Financial Systems, has been added to the website. The paper focuses on a little known technique for accurately reconciling listed and OTC derivatives in fast moving trading environments. This is applicable to a number of instrument classes including agricultural, energy and metal commodities, CFD’s, index or interest rate futures and some options.

Watson Wheatley Financial Systems today announced the successful deployment of the i-Recs reconciliation solution at a London based Hedge Fund. After a short implementation by WWFS’ consultancy team the client is using i-Recs to reconcile daily cash and trades across a variety of asset classes including bonds, equities, CFDs interest rate swaps, commodity options and futures and FX. Importer was configured quickly to parse data for several funds across multiple prime brokers.