HSBC

OTC Trading Platform

The challenge

As a result of changes to legislation arising from the credit crisis, HSBC needed to offer clients the ability to clear trades through a number of clearing houses in various regions worldwide.

HSBC’s Clearing Connectivity Layer and OTC Cleared Trade Acceptance System needed to start with London Clearing House, and be closely followed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Intercontinental Exchange, and the Eurex Exchange.

This had to include:

The approach

The team used agile techniques as the project is very much like a start-up, with a lot of uncertainty about the needs of clients and demands on clearing houses. We had a suite of automated tests, continuous integration and automated deployments. Each app is deployed once a week and we have had only one production defect since the project started.

Scala

Everything is written in Scala. Web applications were built on Liftweb, a highly scaleable and secure web framework for Scala, and Akka, a fault-tolerant actor system. The application is deployed on Linux. Fast results Underscore’s founding partners and associates built the entire system from scratch as this was a new market for HSBC.

We hit an initial deadline to meet LCH technical tests within 6 weeks.

The complete system went live in 10 weeks.

In addition to CME and EUREX exchanges, which went live recently, a client portal has also been built to enable HSBC’s clients to obtain reports on demand for trades they’ve cleared through HSBC.

The team continued to work on the platform which ran successfully for two years until it was handed over to an in-house team.

See the press release for more details.