A joint venture has been announced between TCAM Systems Ltd, the city financial software house, and The Union Discount Company of London Ltd, one of the 10 City discount houses. Programmers are being supplied by both companies, and they will jointly enhance TCAM’s Money Markets System to meet Union Discount’s specific requirements. Modifications will include addition of systems for the Foreign Exchange market and the system will be able to deliver real-time trading and settlement information to back-office personnel as well as automatic update of profit and loss. It also has a range of in-build security features that restrict access to authorised personnel only. It has been developed to run on Stratus Computer Inc’s fault-tolerant systems, so that if one computer crashes the other will take over instantly. At present the package is being modified on a Stratus XA2000 Model 130 which has recently been installed at Union Discount’s offices in Cornhill; next year Model 110 will be installed to continue development work and the Model 130 will become the operational system. The systems, worth in excess of $1m, will replace an existing Unisys system. Live running is planned to start in 1991. Many of the enhancements being developed will also be useful to other organisations, the partners believe, and both companies hope to market the resulting product to building societies, banks and oil companies, which have large liquid funds to manage. Union Discount needs to monitor its financial position more closely as markets have become more volatile, and also needs a system tailored to its specific needs. Union Discount is one of the 10 discount houses, which act as an intermediary between the Bank of England and the secondary money market. It is through the discount houses that the Bank of England seeks to control the level of interest rates and large sums are passed to central and local government, to industry and the banking sector via the discount houses. Operating in the wholesale money market, giving short term loans and buying Bills of Exchange at a discount from banks as well as selling them. They also provide a large number of financial products including portfolio management of liquid funds, currency deposits, futures, options and leasing and asset finance.
