OSTTRA, a global post-trade solutions company, has launched a paper digitisation service that will reduce the time required to process paper-based confirmations for OTC derivatives transactions.
The company notes that creating a digital representation of the trade is fundamental to automating onwards processing and eliminating human error, potentially enabling trade confirmation to be accelerated from hours to minutes.
It says that with tens of thousands of OTC trades still captured on long form paper, reviewing trade details, terms and conditions is an arduous task for all firms, resulting in significant operational cost and risk.
“Historically, the time it takes to process and confirm a paper OTC trade can take days and in some cases weeks, ” said Umniya Ahmed, executive director, investment management strategy, at OSTTRA.
He added, “No two documents have the same legal structure – which presents a major headache to a typical investment manager dealing with multiple counterparties and numerous instrument types. Our solution uses AI to adapt to any type of paper transaction, irrespective of length or format.”
The solution is a significant enhancement to the existing paper trade workflows for investment managers on OSTTRA Trade Manager.
It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to extract and digitise critical details from pdf transaction records, such as the notional value of a swap or strike price of an options contract.
The aim is to improve straight-through processing rates through trade review and matching procedures and facilitating faster trade confirmation.
The paper digitisation service will initially be available for FX options and equity swaps and from September for fixed income options, commodity swaps and non-deliverable forwards.
OSTTRA was established in 2021, bringing together MarkitServ, Traiana, TriOptima and Reset.
