SafeHarbor Trading Technologies
SafeHarbor Trading Technologies is an innovator in providing compliance solutions addressing the late trading and marketing timing issues that have become a major focal point for the SEC over the past two years. By leveraging their experience within the Financial Services sector, SafeHarbor Trading Technologies is providing "Transactional Transparency, Accountability, and Compliance" to help Mutual Funds and Hedge Funds manage (and minimize) their risk by monitoring late trading and market timing issues.

The Business Benefit
The exposure faced by Financial Services firms for failing to adequately ensure that they do not permit either late trading or market timing is enormous and it is not limited to fines from Eliot Spitzer or the SEC. Investment funds are fluid and they flow away from firms that put their interests ahead of those of their investors. Creating an environment that buffers firms from this exposure is critical and the SafeHarbor Trading Technologies solution helps do that.

Their solution recognizes that different institutions will make different decisions regarding how to monitor their transactions, however the key is to maintain "Transactional Transparency, Accountability, and Compliance." Whether it is providing insight into omnibus transactions that had heretofore been nothing but a blended abstraction, or a directly entered client transaction that appears to bump up against appropriate execution guidelines - the goal is clear visibility into the processing of mutual fund trades between the funds and their financial intermediaries. And better visibility means less liability and an easier to manage compliance environment.

The Technical Challenge
Creating a solution to provide the transactional integrity and compliance sought by the SEC, while accommodating the variety of data sources present is a tremendous challenge. For multi-processing environments such as the Retirement Industry, SafeHarbor needs to provide a clear and detailed traceability of financial transactions between each of the parties involved; e.g. Fund Groups, Financial Intermediaries, Plan Participants, Plan Sponsors, Third Party Administrations, Trust and Trading Companies and NSCC. The transaction audit trail of progressively aggregated transactions is the core of what the SEC and SarBox are attempting to regulate.

Creating a solution that allows for the monitoring of complex blended transactions required several key functional capabilities including: digital date & time stamp (DTS) of each transaction, file hashing (MD5 protocols), transactional sequence number (TSN), and "Red Flag" exception reporting.

"As a 20-year veteran of the Financial Services industry, I had a specific vision of a solution addressing late trading and market timing, and yet from our first meeting with CodeLab, they were able to extend and refine our product plan. Their understanding of the financial services sector was extremely helpful, allowing them to become a true partner to us, not just a development team."