News

4 May 2021 (Hong Kong): Contineo is very pleased to welcome Nomura International Wealth Management (IWM) as a new client.

Nomura IWM is going live with Contineo’s brand new platform, which was released in late 2020.

Contineo is thrilled to be part of Nomura’s ambitious plan to accelerate expansion of its client franchise in Asia ex-Japan and enhance its WM services platform with digital capabilities.

Contineo offers an intuitive and responsive user interface with a wide range of payoffs and variations. Structured products can be customized, priced and executed in a fully automated manner with up to 18 different issuers. Our web-based platform can be deployed to a large number of users in multiple locations in minutes.

Contineo’s technology leverages on best-in-class security certifications and allows users to carry on performing their duties even from home without any business disruption. It is an optimal and flexible solution for private banks looking to grow their structured product business.

03 February 2021 (Hong Kong): Contineo is very pleased to welcome The Bank of East Asia (BEA) as a new client.

The Bank of East Asia is going live with Contineo’s brand new platform, which was released in late 2020.

Contineo offers a very wide range of payoffs and issuers through a user-friendly GUI with smart pricing widgets. Our new platform does not require any installation and can be deployed to hundreds of users in just a few weeks.

Contineo’s technology leverages on best-in-class security certifications and allows users to carry on performing their duties even from home without any business disruption. It is an optimal solution for private banks looking to grow their structured product business.

06 October 2020 (Hong Kong): Contineo, the first industry supported platform for pricing discovery, order management and post-trade services of structured products, is thrilled to announce the release of its new platform.

Contineo’s next generation platform has been released to all its clients. CTO Franck Lerat explained how the company had prepared for this strategic technology change.

“Over the past two years we have built a high performing team of expert engineers all located in the same office and operating a lean organization of the kind that only fintechs can achieve,” he said. “We have worked in close partnership with our clients, using the state-of-the-art technologies and best practice development lifecycle on agile and devops model.”

The end result is a leading-edge platform with high availability and resiliency, combined with the agility to quickly deliver and deploy changes. The platform also offers full scalability to handle large volumes, combined with the ability to integrate the most complex products and workflows.

“The core platform is developed on a flexible architecture of micro services all containerized and managed in Kubernetes clusters,” Mr. Lerat said. “It is completely hosted in the cloud and doesn’t require any client side deployment. It offers our clients an open architecture, exposing all services available via standard API transports and formats. We are all extremely proud of this new platform which will provide Contineo years of competitive advantage by being written day one on the best technology design patterns.”

CEO Antoine de Charnacé highlighted that this major milestone for the company had happened while Contineo was celebrating its fifth year.

“Thanks to the great support of our clients and the upmost dedication of the team, Contineo has become a leading provider of technology solutions for wealth managers to address their most pressing challenges by building flexible and integrated workflows and mitigating risks,” he said.

Mr. de Charnacé explained how the recent work from home environment under Covid-19 had proven the benefits of a web-based platform that can be remotely accessed by a wide population of users. Product dealers, investment counselors and relationship managers can receive in seconds multiple batches of pricings from anywhere (Contineo facilitated 9 million prices year-to-date). Not only does Contineo help users to connect with 16 different issuers for pricing and execution of ten popular equity payoffs, but it also empowers them with an end-to-end solution, including market intelligence and post-trade services designed to achieve more for end clients.

“We foresee more than twice the volume placed via Contineo compared to last year despite the unprecedented business dislocation in 2020. This new platform will help to accelerate further our growth by reinforcing trusted partnerships with clients and unlocking new opportunities,” Mr. de Charnacé said. “With such a comprehensive and flexible offering, Contineo is ready to address client needs in various geographical locations and across different asset classes. The team has built a unique domain expertise, with deep in-house experience in technology and structured products.”

08 October 2019 (Hong Kong): Contineo, the industry-backed messaging network for equity-linked structured products, announced today the appointment of Franck Lerat as Chief Technology Officer.

CEO Antoine de Charnacé said Mr Lerat was ideally placed to lead the next technology evolution of Contineo’s successful structured product platform.

“We are tremendously excited to welcome Franck to Contineo,” he said. “He’s the ideal person to lead our talented team of technologists as we further develop the platform and deliver the new functionalities that will help our users and their end clients extract even more value out of the structured product investment process.”

CEO Antoine de Charnacé explained this addition to the team was very timely and an important milestone for the company to support the positive trend and ongoing developments.

“We have made significant progress this year in rolling out Contineo platform directly to investment counselors and relationship managers, beyond the dealing team of our buy-side clients. Contineo’s web-based solution gives a unique advantage for client-facing users who can send RFQs remotely on their tablets and receive pricings across 15 issuers in less than a minute, while sharing a coffee with their clients. The increasing number of users (+70% this year) combined with new payoffs available on the platform translate into more RFQs (+30% YoY) and ultimately more transactions. Compared to last year, we foresee a 20% growth on the volume placed via Contineo despite a more challenging market environment in 2019. This trend will be supported further by a new private bank joining Contineo’s network in Q4 this year” he said.

“Technology is more than ever at the core of our development plans to scale up the business with new platform features and new services available such as lifecycle module and enhanced analytics tools. It is key to reinforce our position in Hong Kong and Singapore and support our customers operations across the globe. Franck’s appointment further enhances Contineo’s position as the leading partner sustaining both our buy and sell-side banking clients technology transformation” he concluded.

With more than 25 years’ experience in equity derivatives technology, Mr Lerat said he was looking forward to applying his deep global expertise to Contineo’s nimble and innovative technology stack.

“Contineo represents the next exciting evolution in the structured product space,” he said. “I followed Contineo’s work closely since it launched in 2015, and I look forward very much to being part of the next iteration of its journey.”

Mr Lerat joins Contineo from HSBC, where he was Global Head of Equity Derivatives IT in charge of the digital transformation of the technology stack. He was previously Co-Head of Equity Derivatives IT at JPMorgan, where he spent most of his career and recently reengineered the firm’s technology solutions for equity derivatives front to back.

For interviews with Antoine de Charnacé:
Kristin Westlake, The Continuum Partners | kwestlake@thecontinuumpartners.com | +61 416 219 358

ABOUT CONTINEO

Contineo is the first industry supported, open messaging network for pricing discovery and order management to private banks, wealth managers and issuers of structured products.

Contineo also offers a network for centralized and standardized lifecycle events, and smart analytics for participants to access real-time market intelligence and identify new business opportunities.

Contineo believes that automation increases productivity and efficiency for structured products helping buy-side clients to thrive in a competitive market environment.

Contineo is a cost efficient and easy-to-access solution for all market participants. For more information or to request a demo, please reach out to info@contineo.com.hk.