Risk Newsflashes

Mantas has called for the creation of an industry coalition to work on developing a monitoring standard to combat money laundering.

The London-based provider of anti-money-laundering (AML) technology says this would help major financial firms put in place technology to identify and eliminate money laundering without increasing their regulatory burden. Mantas made the suggestion in response to the Financial Services Authority's Discussion Paper 22, "Reducing Money Laundering Risk: Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering monitoring."

The standard could be developed via an industry-steering committee coordinating the views of regulated firms, law-enforcement agencies, AML consultants and suppliers of automated systems, Mantas says.

---

WestLB has licensed the Principia System from Principia Partners to manage its new structured investment vehicle (SIV).

The WestLB vehicle, named Harrier Finance Ltd., will integrate the Principia System with their existing portfolio and risk-management tools to manage the entire SIV operation from deal capture to accounting.

WestLB will leverage the system's advanced pricing, risk and analytical capabilities to produce the necessary regulatory and management reports required to sustain rating-agency approval.

SIVs are independent, bankruptcy-remote entities, often sponsored by banks. They capitalize on the arbitrage between highly rated investment-grade securities that they purchase, such as asset-backed securities, and the shorter-term commercial-paper and medium-term notes that they issue.

---

SuperDerivatives is launching its foreign-exchange options-risk- management system. The SuperDerivatives Risk Management System (SDRM) will meet the needs of front and middle offices of trading and treasury operations in banks and large corporations. It's also suitable for controllers and risk-management departments.

At the heart of SDRM is SuperDerivatives options-pricing system. Institutions that purchase SDRM will have access to a pricing and analytics system. It will provide real-time market rates for all option classes on nearly all currencies from SuperDerivatives.

The system, which is fully customizable, can be configured for monitoring portfolios from the level of the trader, the desk subset and the entire bank to the individual client portfolio or any subset portfolio that the user defines. The system can also help institutions monitor their credit lines.