While the growth in derivatives trading offers financial institutions significant opportunities to increase revenue, attract new clients, and improve their competitive position, capitalizing on these opportunities is far from simple. The complex nature of derivatives, coupled with the rapid increase in traded volumes, has led to lengthy confirmation cycles and greater risk, which regulatory bodies are pressuring firms to resolve. With an aim to minimize the risk, the Mumbai based Beans & Intellect Financial Technology has come up with a unique blend of technology, domain, and system expertise that helps financial institutions achieve their targets in various strategic initiatives with extremely reduced time-to-market.

Founded in 2005 by S. Dhilly Babu and Anshumaan, Beans India’s expertise in quantitative finance and modeling as well as knowledge of global derivatives markets, derivatives desk operations, and regulatory framework is backed up with a strong IT capability to convert its strong domain knowledge into customized technology solutions. The company developed a pre-trade derivatives processing product, called WebTrade, to un-risk the process of derivative trading. It is an ASP based online platform that can be accessed from anywhere with a username and password on a web browser. The platform spans the entire spectrum of derivatives life-cycle - realtime pricing, structuring, risk management, and portfolio management with realtime market data.

WebTrade covers a wide range of derivative products, from liquid vanillas to highly illiquid OTC structured products across various asset classes. “It is powered by a highly optimized, efficient mathematical engine built using proprietary Beans++ language with built-in models and methodologies required for valuation of any complex structured derivative products on a fly,” says Anshumaan.

Other than the WebTrade, the company has a product called TradeEngine, which is built to solve complex quantitative, technology, and consulting problems faced by an array of financial institutions. Reuters has partnered with Beans & Intellect in the Asia Pacific region to augment their capabilities in building and implementing their treasury products. “In order to reach out to a large financial institution, we had to connect with a large treasury system provider or such a functional technology intermediary. Therefore our early association with Reuters was in the right direction,” says Dhilly Babu, who is also the Mmanaging Director at Beans & Intellect.

Though, there are players in the market like Numerix, SciComp, SuperDerivatives, Resolution, RiskMetrics, FINCAD, Markit, Advanced Portfolio Technologies, Reval, and OTC Valuation, Anshumaan believes that Beans & Intellect’s selling proposition is its ability to provide solutions in a cost effective manner. “We spend a lot of time in research. We take research oriented approach for solving a problem and this is also one of the factors that differentiate us from others in the market,” he says.