START supports many different types of securities. However, one of the main advantages of the system is that the core feature set remains the same for auction rate or variable rate trading. See below for a short list of the common features included with START.
Security Master
- Extensive, extensible security master for all supported products. Nearly every field, including trading accounts, product types, industry codes, and credit enhancement features, is user-definable to meet the specific needs of your firm.
- Ability to store and deliver digital copies of prospectuses, offering statements, or analyst research directly from the application.
- Full history and a future calendar of rate resets, interest payments, and broker fee payments. These calendars are automatically generated and maintained, including holiday adjustment handling.
- Ability to capture and report calls, partial/full redemptions, and sinking fund provisions.
Trading
- Simple-to-use trade entry screen automatically calculates accrued interest and sales commissions, including fee-sharing arrangements with other dealers, in real-time as you enter the trade. View Screenshot
- Inventory and investor positions updated in real-time as trades are executed.
- Inventory monitor with advanced filtering allows users to find the offerings they want. Inventory can also be reserved and discounted if desired. The system can even display and allow you to purchase other dealer's inventory offerings if your business model supports it. View Screenshot
- Ability to enter cross trades between investor accounts.
- Ability to cancel or modify trades.
- Ability to enter street trades with other dealers.
- Redemption processing component makes it easy to track calls and positions changes.
- Fully-searchable trade history with advanced filtering lets the user quickly find the trades they want.
- ACAT functionality allows you to easily track accounts that come to or leave your firm.
- Accrued Interest calculator lets users run scenarios to see how much interest they can expect given various trade amounts and holding periods. View Screenshot
Reporting
- Complete suite of reports displays your data in an easy-to-read format. Every report has your logo and can be configured with your own disclaimers in the header and footer. View Screenshot
- All reports can be printed or exported to Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, or other formats.
- Ad Hoc Query features allows your firm to create brand new reports without code updates. If you create the spec for the report, your IT or Napa Group can usually deliver it the same day.
User Interface
- Easy-to-use user interface with a logical and intuitive layout.
- Custom toolbar that gives each user immediate access to her favorite screens
- Each screen can be emailed, exported to Excel, or printed.
- Each screen has extensive context-sensitive help.
Permissions, Security, and Audits
- Designed to meet even the most stringent requirements of your internal audit department or the SEC’s rigid procedural reviews.
- Entitlement system comes pre-configured with Trader, Sales Rep, and Admin roles (to name a few) and allows your firm to customize the functionality you expose to the various users of the system.
- Access to START can be encrypted using SSL, as can external data transmissions, ensuring secure two-way communication.
- Fully audited database means that every insert/update/delete is logged and searchable from the application. For example, you'll always know who inserted a trade and who made modifications to it.
- The system can be configured to expire passwords, restrict them to a minimum length and number of repeating characters, and limit their reuse.
- Users are automatically logged off after a configurable number of minutes of inactivity.
Other
- Ability to create calendars and enter rates for the market indices you track, like LIBOR or 30 day CP.
