Application Integration

Financial messaging standards are evolving rapidly to meet new business requirements and automate each step along the value chain. The adoption of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is opening up new possibilities for bank-to-bank as well as bank-to-corporate STP. Financial institutions must respond rapidly to evolutions in messaging standards and enhance the quality of their messages to maximise STP. The industry is facing multiple standard coexistence and interoperability including SWIFT, SEPA, FIX, FpML.

Steform highlights

STEFORM is an intelligent message builder EAI dedicated to the financial industry.

Based on JAVA and XML, it ensures a maximum of portability and is open to any operating system and database.

STEFORM offers a full graphical interface for complex workflow designs, in and out mapping for any to any format translation, content enrichment and enhancement, automated messages generation, XML production, legacy format parsing, bulking debulking facilities, and market datafeed decoding (Reuters, Telekurs, VMDaten, Bloomberg). Providing multiple connectors and able to support all the financial libraries such as SWIFT FIN, SWIFT XML (i.e. SWIFTNet Funds, Exceptions & Investigations, Cash Reporting…), SEPA, FIX, FpML, SIC, SECOM, SARIE.

STEFORM is embedded into Sterci other products under the name of Easy Connect to facilitate connectivity and interface with back-end applications. STEFORM is also embedded in third party product such as APSYS from Sungard and Thaler from Callataÿ & Wouters.

In a Service Oriented Architecture, STEFORM can be called by other applications for providing its high value services through standard communication channels (file, Websphere MQ, Weblogic, API, SOAP, SQL, CORBA, etc.). To leverage the STEFORM integration in common banking architecture and order management systems, STEFORM has been recently enriched with a FIX engine that can provide direct FIX connectivity to SWX or any broker or stock exchange.

Steform added-value features
     • Full FIX solution including FIX 4.0 to 4.4 message libraries and the FIX communication protocol
     • Easy Connect is the Steform technology embedded into another Sterci product Stelink, Stematch or KEYdata
     • Steform can be either licensed as a stand alone EAI product or embedded into a third party application to provide an        inside transformation and connectivity tool.
     • Complete standards description (including validation rules) of SWIFT messages in XML.
     • Multi-standards knowledge kernel open to any formats.
     • Easy configuration of mapping rules utilising a graphical user interface.
     • Business variant editor to customise messages.
     • Configurable workflow using a rules engine.
     • Reduced maintenance charges with release migration kit.
     • Easy parsing of host application data formats.
     • A business solution which is easy to implement.

Sterci’s complementary suite of SOA solutions for STP including Stelink financial messaging hub, Stematch for reconciliation & exception management and KEYdata for market data management.