News / Views

Select articles for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

October 2009 - John Cant, MPIE Managing Director, data architecture article published in Buy-Side Technology 
The article argues that in these uncertain times, the ability to assimilate data in a meaningful way across the enterprise is a key component of effective investment management. But how can you manage and consolidate the huge volume of data that is available, and more importantly, how can buy-side firms leverage it so that it realises its potential? John Cant, MPIE Managing Director, and Simon Blakeney from Blakeney Consulting evaluate some of the weaknesses of past data-management strategies and provide suggestions that could improve data collation and analysis across the enterprise. For more details, contact us now.

July 2009 - MPI Europe Managing Director, John Cant, quoted in article about risk and legacy in the Engine magazine published by Erudine
In the article he looks at the principles of defensive design and the need for flexibility to address the current and future risk management challenges. For the full magazine go to www.erudine.com

May 2009 - MPIE and Globant form strategic alliance with Intel to help financial firms benefit from latest technology 
MPI Europe and alliance partner Globant have formed an alliance with Intel to help financial firms migrate from legacy technology platforms to the new highly performant Xeon5500 chip. This initiative, named FasterAPPS, is a combination of MPIE's consulting expertise, Globant's IT services skills and staff and Intel's in-depth technology and tuning expertise. For more details, contact us now.

April 2009 - MPI Europe publish risk management survey as part of FS ThinkTank initiative
MPI Europe has completed an extensive risk management survey as part of the FS ThinkTank initiative. With widespread acceptance that over the past few years the business priority had shifted too far towards short term profitability, so the longer term risks were underplayed or ignored, our survey finds that the market is unconvinced by the supposed benefits of a single global regulator, preferring instead to address the new risk management challenges through a combination of practical actions across people, culture, process and technology. Some of the questions we posed could be summarised as "how did we get here?” The survey answers to this showed it is widely accepted that at the market level there has been a failure to correctly risk manage certain instrument types e.g. securitised products and credit derivatives. Our survey found broad agreement on the specific causes. For example, over 83% of respondents agreed or agreed strongly that business priorities had shifted too far to the short term, and over 70% saw the use of similar pricing and risk models and equations across many firms contributed to market volatility. This last trend meant that in good times everyone found these instruments attractive and so demand was high, but once the market turned, demand fell rapidly across the board. Interestingly less than half thought that irrational factors such as shock, a major loss of confidence and herd mentality were significant. This contrasted with the importance of data issues e.g. for underlying instruments or ratings.

March 2009 - MPI Europe Growth Strategy continues
MPI Europe has signed two new alliance agreements as part of our continued growth strategy. Firstly, RiMaOne, the leading risk management product vendor and MPI Europe have extended their existing partnership which aims to bring enterprise-wide risk and compliance solutions to financial services. We have also signed an agreement with Tealeaf, the leading provider of online customer experience software - particularly important to supporting the increasing number of portals and Software as a Service implementations.

January 2009 - MPI Europe publishes results of Faster Payments survey as part of fastpayments.co.uk initiative
FastPayments.co.uk – the industry information site dedicated to Faster Payments - undertook a survey (run by MPI Europe) into the current state and progression of the scheme following its public launch some months ago. We are interested in understanding an industry view of the schemes benefits, challenges, implementation progression, and likely future development. In a wider sense this survey will inform industry discussion and lead to a better market understanding of Faster Payments growth, penetration, and strategic commercial value. We would welcome additional contributions from people at financial institutions who are involved in FP initiatives. If you would like to get a summary of the results of this survey or talk to us about Faster Payments please contact us through the contact page on this site or call us on 02071531052