Bank of China, CCB roll out Misys’ Opics suite

Bank of China and China Construction Bank (CCB) are rolling out London-based Misys International Banking Systems' Opics treasury and capital markets software suite. The service will provide both institutions with a straight-through processing (STP) capability and improve risk management.

Bank of China, one of the largest of the four state-owned mainland China banks, with 13,000 branches, went live with phase one of the project at its Beijing head office in September 2001. This involved installing applications supporting foreign exchange, fixed-income, deposits and loans trades. Other components of the system cover nostro account management, net settlement, and trade confirmation and matching.

Phase two, involving support for instruments such as interest rate swaps, futures and over-the-counter options, went live on December 12.

“As well as improving the bank’s overall STP capability, Opics has proved beneficial as a processing engine covering a range of financial instruments traded by the bank,” said a Bank of China spokesman. “By enabling us to consolidate all our treasury transactions on a single database, Opics has enhanced the quality of information available to management and provided greater control over exposure to risk,” he added.

CCB, which has 26,000 domestic branches in China, is mid-way through its Opics installation at its Beijing head office. Opics will be integrated with its front–office Reuters Kondor+ system for STP of treasury instruments. The system will support deposits and loans, fixed income, call and notice, foreign exchange, repurchase agreements, OTC options, forward rate agreements, mortgage-backed securities and various swaps transactions.

Other functions include multi-currency general ledger, confirmation matching and nostro account management, plus rate-feed handling and interfaces to the bank’s Bloomberg trading system, the Swift message network and CCB’s clearing network for its domestic branch foreign currency payments.