POSTED BY Larry Loocke | POSTED IN Allegro, Blog, E/CTRM

Automated Broker Reconciliation for Smarter Margin Management in Allegro

When buying marginable securities like futures and options, precise margin management is paramount.  In fact, the accuracy of your daily financial data can mean the difference in having sufficient liquidity for purchases, or having to borrow from your lenders.  How many times has your financial broker executed a margin call, only to find the statement inaccurate? Companies playing catch-up could needlessly lose millions of dollars every day.

capSpire’s Broker Reconciliation Tool rectifies costly discrepancies by providing accurate information on your margin requirements around your financial positions – all through an automated process. Risk Managers can leverage this knowledge to quickly uncover errors in margin statements and take immediate action.

Allegro Integration

capSpire’s team leverages its Broker Reconciliation Tool to extract trading positions and marginable-security prices, downloaded from ICE. Next, by applying the correct algorithms, the SPAN calculator outputs the precise figure needed to compute  the margin. The true required amount is identified, which saves time for other uses and optimizes buying power.  Once armed with accurate information, you can raise an issue with the broker, letting the financial institution know, “These positions are incorrect.  Here are the exact amounts.”  If the bank has too much of your cash on hand, it will be refunded, potentially saving millions of dollars in interest payments.

How capSpire’s Automated Broker Reconciliation Tool Can Help

First, it integrates with the broker statement, CME Margin Services™, and ICE for automated reconciliation. It automates the time-consuming verification of margin requirements and quickly calculates the difference between the broker statement and the data provided by CME Margin Services™.  Finally, it creates a streamlined business process for disputes and resolutions.

capSpire’s Broker Reconciliation Tool downloads broker-statement files by logging in to the broker’s FTP server, parses and stores the data in a staging table in Allegro.  The same process is used to download pricing files from ICE, which are fed into the SPAN Calculator.  Using a combination of queries to collect and aggregate position data from Allegro, these positions are then grouped by financial instrument per delivery month.  The SPAN Calculator gives us an output showing the overall margin requirements broken down by each of the positions, grouped accordingly, stored in a customized table in Allegro.

From there, a process picks up data from both the bank statement and SPAN output in order to run a comparison and determine issues between them.  Outputs of this process are clearly displayed on a screen so you can compare the two data sets, discover any differences and report any discrepancies to the bank.  The final output is in three forms: a Complete Match, where no action needs to be taken; a Partial Match, where you can determine if there are position or price discrepancies; and No Match, where it’s possible either the bank skipped a position or perhaps there are positions missing in Allegro.

Automated Tools That Increase Productivity

capSpire’s Broker Reconciliation Tool increases productivity and provides significant cost savings long term – all through an automated process. capSpire can help empower your team to quickly uncover errors in margin statements and take immediate action. For a deeper dive into how capSpire’s Broker Reconciliation Tool can help your organization, contact us at 888.532.2815 or at info@capspire.com.

About capSpire

capSpire provides the unique combination of industry knowledge and business expertise required to deliver impactful trading and risk-management business solutions. Trusted by some of the world’s leading companies, capSpire’s team of industry experts and CTRM consultants empower our clients with the business strategies and solutions required to effectively streamline business processes and attain maximum value from their supporting IT infrastructure.


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