Acadia Launches Settlement Manager, Providing the Industry with a New, Centralized and Fully Automated Settlement Infrastructure

Norwell, MA: Acadia, a leading industry provider of integrated risk management services for the derivatives community, today announced the launch of Settlement Manager, a unique industry wide central service created to improve settlement efficiency and reduce settlement fails. Settlement Manager was created at the request of clients that were losing a well-known central settlement service and needed a replacement capability. Acadia quickly responded to ensure that an industry solution would be in place for any of its community of over 3,000 clients.

Settlement Manager initially focuses on a set of key industry requirements: enabling messaging required for regular market settlements – whether cash or securities – and for tri-party and third-party segregation. Additionally, for the first time within the Acadia platform, it establishes the ability for counterparties to leverage the power of shared Standing Settlement Instructions (SSI’s) and shared real-time settlement status, thereby enabling a workflow with the potential to eliminate operational complexity and increase automation across the industry.

“Through industry collaboration, we have developed Settlement Manager to enable a more streamlined workflow. By leveraging Acadia’s widely used Margin Manager service, firms can settle their pre-agreed transactions within the same shared infrastructure. This shortens the distance between agreeing to transfer collateral and actually making it happen,” said Will Thomey, Co-head Business Development.

With extended strategic benefits to the entire industry, Settlement Manager enables clients to:

• Share confirmed settlement status simultaneously to each party of the margin requirement;
• Provide a centralized mechanism to store various forms of settlement instructions necessary for collateral management;
• Remove reliance on manual processes through automated cash and security collateral settlement messaging;
• Eliminate fragmented workflows with automated messaging to bilateral counterparties and their custodians, as well as to triparty agents; and
• Remove settlement redundancies by agreeing and settling collateral moves in one workflow.

Krzysztof Wierzchowski, Vice President at Franklin Templeton, commented,

“We have been working with Acadia to help shape a fresh approach to margin settlement. We are constantly working to improve efficiency, reduce collateral transfer times, and improve settlement transparency. Accomplishing it all within Acadia’s existing workflows is a strategic win.”

Following the announcement in December of LSEG acquiring Acadia, this is the first of many combined initiatives, whereby Settlement Manager is leveraging the LSEG SWIFT gateway to provide downstream messaging – creating significant industry efficiencies. To develop Settlement Manager, Acadia has been working with the industry via its working groups to continually improve and expand its usability, and the service went live on June 20th with an initial client set. With the service's successful launch, Acadia is immediately pivoting to the next set of enhancements (prioritized by the industry) to unlock additional value across the network.