Eiger Trading Advisors Ltd

Technology

Since inception, Eiger has focused on delivering our products and services to clients through the most up-to-date and efficient technology platforms. We have developed a suite of core trading technologies tailored for the Islamic marketplaces. In addition, our Information Technology group offers consultancy and bespoke IT solutions to institutional clients based on our proprietary software and systems' architecture expertise.

 

We have developed and implemented bespoke add-on features to the Eiger Trading Platform (ETP) for the majority of our clients, to suit their exact operational and Sharia'a requirements.

 

Eiger Trading Platform (ETP)

Eiger performs a unique and important role as both technology provider and commodity supplier. The Eiger Trading Platform (ETP) provides Islamic market participants with instant access to diverse inventories of physical assets, located throughout the world, including within the GCC.

 

The ETP is an electronic web-based platform, designed exclusively to provide a secure and efficient electronic mechanism to facilitate the sale and purchase of Sharia'a-compliant assets for Islamic financial institutions' commodity murabaha requirements. Functionality includes real-time allocation of assets, management of trade confirmations, and bespoke trade flows.

 

In the 5 years since its release, the ETP has continually evolved using sophisticated and groundbreaking technology to bridge the two worlds of industry and consumer finance. The ETP has grown and improved beyond the ETP Core offering, with several bespoke add-on features having been developed within the ETP architecture to improve our facilitation services. These include: ETP Core; ETP Retail; ETP CASA; and ETP Client Reach.

 

ETP Core

The Core version of the ETP is web-based and delivers real-time Islamic banking services across deposits, financing, treasury and investment operations, with built in Sharia'a-compliant workflows, enabling banks to serve their clients (both retail and wholesale) with total ethical and professional confidence.

 

ETP Core is truly global, currently used by participants from across Europe, the GCC and SE Asia, and is made available to suit the trading hours of our clients. It employs the highest levels of security and data encryption ensuring our clients can transact and manage their orders in perfect confidence.

 

ETP Core currently supports one asset seller and multiple asset purchasers, each of whom operate on an entirely segregated portal to ensure Sharia'a-compliance.

ETP Retail

In 2014, Eiger Trading launched the world's first commodity murabaha trading platform designed exclusively for Islamic retail banking. The platform integrates directly with our bank clients' core banking systems through a 24/7 automated interface. This enables us to provide real-time 24/7 trading in local and international commodities to support Murabaha and Salam-based products, such as term deposits, personal loans, and credit cards.

 

The ETP has revolutionized the typical process for Islamic banks' retail products, having developed a state-of-the-art straight-through processing (STP) engine with a live interface to our clients' core system. This allows for precisely the correct amount of commodity to be purchased and matched to the client in real-time at the exact point of financing, providing instant settlement and disbursement of funds. The entire Murabaha trade cycle is electronically and automatically processed in a matter of seconds.

 

As our platform is operational 24 hours a day, we can support round-the-clock banking and e-commerce systems. This in turn allows our bank clients' to develop products such as Islamic credit cards and online banking applications that would have been restricted by slower, more manual asset trading methods.

ETP CASA

After the success of ETP Retail in the GCC, and the strong demand for similar technology from Malaysia, in 2015 we launched ETP CASA - an end-to-end Commodity Murabaha solution for Islamic CASA products, providing 24/7 real time trading for all account activity.

 

ETP CASA offers fully-automated purchase and sale of commodities in real-time by exchanging trade information documentation through secure Web Service messages.

 

It has an automated interface to our clients' banking systems, to instantly facilitate Commodity Murabaha transactions as required by any of our clients' CASA customers.

 

For example, when a CASA account holder tops up his balance through a branch teller, online or at an ATM, ETP CASA allocates available commodity to each individual trade in real time, completing the transaction in seconds for instant settlement of funds, and instant calculation of profit based on the new balance amount.

 

Each customer deposit prompts an individual Commodity Murabaha transaction, ensuring greater Sharia'a comfort.

 

ETP CASA is an extremely flexible and scalable tool - the functionality, interface and business process can all be developed and tailored to suit to our bank clients' exact requirements.

ETP Client Reach

ETP Client Reach is an integrated middle and back office ETP-add-on for our bank clients. This system upgrade was also entirely developed in-house, and allows users to manage transaction schedules for multiple lines of business within the bank, with different clients, across a sophisticated and wide range of financial products requiring underlying assets.

 

Users can set-up a trade scheduler for each new transaction they have, relating to a specific product and client, which can handle multiple future settlement dates. Users are alerted when there is an upcoming settlement date, and create a commodity order for the required amount on the ETP interface. Straight-through processing (STP) and strict business logic ensure the accuracy and efficiency of order inputs. Further automation can also be built into the process if required to increase efficiency.

 

Client Reach can manage multiple client-specific templates relating to a particular order transaction, allowing the management of the full life-cycle of each transaction: from initial trade set-up to asset order management and confirmations exchange.

 

Order statuses can be tracked and managed, and all historical data and confirmations are stored on the ETP, which also provides bespoke live data reporting and asset accounting statements.

 

Bespoke IT Consultancy

Every client is different, and as such it is our policy to adapt our approved processes and technologies to fit with every nuanced requirement, whether from an operational, technological or Sharia'a perspective.

 

We design and develop specific ETP add-ons at the request of our clients, as well as provide IT consultancy services and expertise to assist with the development of new and standalone products with dedicated technologies.

 

Total IT expenditure by global financial institutions topped 200bn USD in 2014, which represents an annual investment of around 8% of gross revenues. Such a large commitment of resources demonstrates the huge importance of information technology to the banking sector, and shows the level of value creation attributable to IT platforms and systems throughout the industry. This is no less true for Islamic Finance, which has somewhat lagged behind its conventional peers in the business benefits conferred by tech innovation.  In our opinion, this is partly due to the lack of offerings built from the ground up, exclusively with Sharia'a-compliant finance in mind - the majority are simply adapted from conventional banking systems and 'Islamicised' as an afterthought.

 

The Eiger Trading Platform (ETP) and all ETP add-ons are developed entirely in-house, using the latest technologies, and are tailor-made for the Islamic finance industry. As a result, we firmly believe there is significant value to a piece of bespoke software, designed to accommodate the particular, nuanced needs of Sharia'a-compliant financial transactions.

 

Eiger adopts agile development methodologies to deliver your bespoke solution on-time, on-scope, and on-budget. We offer expertise in project design and management, and we handle the complete agile development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, application development, configuration, testing (SIT and UAT), product documentation and roll-out.

Eiger's team of business analysts and developers collaborate to address usability concerns and to optimize workflow and interfaces.