News

Wintrust Financial Empowers Trading with DerivativeEDGE®

Partners with Derivative Path to bolster its hedging program, will use its cloud-based OTC trading platform to manage trade execution, sales, operations and Dodd-Frank compliance of its interest rate derivatives activity

Wintrust Financial Corporation (Wintrust) (NASDAQ: WTFC) has selected DerivativeEDGE, as its system of record for all interest rates derivatives trading activity. After an extensive search for the right enterprise trading technology platform, the bank partnered with Derivative Path, Inc. to enhance and streamline its commercial interest rate derivatives offering. Wintrust, with approximately $35 billion dollars in assets amongst its 15 charters, will leverage DerivativeEDGE (an end-to-end cloud-based OTC derivative trading platform) to structure, execute and manage its interest rate derivatives portfolio.

Pat Hennelly, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets, at Wintrust stated “We work with a variety of commercial clients who have a wide range of interest rate hedging needs. Our customer-facing interest rate hedging business has been in place for many years and has been growing steadily. To manage the existing business and to provide a strong infrastructure for further growth, we evaluated various platforms for our business. We knew we needed to find a solution that was cost effective, adaptable, and highly-scalable. After an in-depth evaluation of the various technology solutions available, we concluded that the software-as-a-service platform from Derivative Path was exactly what we needed. With DerivativeEDGE, we will be able to run a highly efficient, client-facing, and balance sheet derivative program. We were impressed with the functionality of the software, including the artificial intelligence-enabled automation of various operational tasks, which will greatly reduce the time spent on these tasks. The Derivative Path team worked closely with us to onboard our substantial existing portfolio within weeks and to train our team on the simple user interface, avoiding any disruption to our existing business activities. We look forward to growing our partnership with Derivative Path.”

Reflecting on the new partnership, Derivative Path’s Head of Business Development, Zack Nagelberg commented “We’re thrilled that Wintrust has chosen to partner with us to help further build out their capital markets capabilities. Wintrust is one of the most well-known and respected regional banks in the country and their decision to enhance their swap program with DerivativeEDGE further validates the industry-leading platform we’ve created. The powerful and agile framework of DerivativeEDGE coupled with our modular support model will provide Wintrust with flexibility and scale for the future. We look forward to expanding the services and support we provide to Wintrust as they continue to grow their program over time.”

The state-of-the-art DerivativeEDGE platform has been designed to be a complete end-to-end solution for interest rate and FX derivative trading, servicing, and hedge accounting. With DerivativeEDGE, users have front-, mid-, and back-office functionality in one platform, eliminating the inefficiencies of working with disparate systems to manage various aspects of the business. The system also includes a fully automated hedge accounting platform which is fully compliant with the new hedge accounting rules of ASU 2017-12. The platform comes complete with real-time market data and automated swap data reporting, and cleared trade affirmation. The system is designed within a framework that also aids users in meeting their Dodd-Frank requirements related to the execution of transactions with commercial clients and dealer counterparties, as well as ongoing data and document retention requirements. Administrators are able to manage user profiles with roles-based permissions and workflows to ensure controls and appropriate separation of duties.

About Derivative Path, Inc.

Derivative Path is a San Francisco Bay Area-based FinTech company with additional offices in New York City and Chicago. The company provides a technology-led solution to assist financial institutions, buyside, and commercial end-users in executing and managing their over-the-counter interest rate derivative and foreign exchange transactions.

The Derivative Path team is comprised of derivative industry veterans who have held senior positions with some of the world’s largest capital markets firms, such as Wells Fargo, ABN AMRO, Société Générale, Bank of America, Barclays, AIG, and JPMorgan Chase. For more information about Derivative Path, visit www.derivativepath.com.

About Wintrust Financial

Wintrust is a financial holding company with assets of approximately $35 billion whose common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Built on the “HAVE IT ALL” model, Wintrust offers sophisticated technology and resources of a large bank while focusing on providing service-based community banking to each and every customer. Wintrust operates fifteen community bank subsidiaries with over 160 banking locations located in the greater Chicago and southern Wisconsin market areas. Additionally, Wintrust operates various non-bank business units including business units which provide commercial and life insurance premium financing in the United States, a premium finance company operating in Canada, a company providing short-term accounts receivable financing and value-added out-sourced administrative services to the temporary staffing services industry, a business unit engaging primarily in the origination and purchase of residential mortgages for sale into the secondary market throughout the United States, and companies providing wealth management services and qualified intermediary services for tax-deferred exchanges. For more information about Wintrust, visit www.wintrust.com.

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