XRHMA Connect® “Your Bridge to the Bank”
XrhmaConnect® aims to provide real time interoperability and integration with core banking information systems through a reliable, standardized, flexible and cost effective interface. Based on Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture and open standards XrhmaConnect® can simplify, automate and maintain complicated business processes that demand incorporation and information exchange between core banking systems and Xrhma trading platform. This way, many processes that currently require human intervention or even do not exist into current IT infrastructure are now automated. As a result, innovative business strategies can be supported and extended security requirements can be fulfilled.
XrhmaConnect® is based on the principle that there are specific processes performed by specific systems. Each system has been designed and developed to support some specific operations. Thus, XRHMA is capable of providing trading and order routing services including related backoffice operations whereas a banking system may provide services related to deposits, withdrawals and interest calculation. Furthermore, although there could be services that both systems are capable to provide, in order to have a unified, efficient, reliable and secure infrastructure, each operation should be always accomplished through the same, most suitable and specialized, information system. To achieve that, both systems should be updated, synchronized and have all the necessary information to provide the services that are capable of. Moreover, business rules and security constraints should be enforced. Broker Systems SA has developed XrhmaConnect® to accompany XRHMA Suite in an effort to promote such interoperability and integration with core banking systems.
Overall Architecture, business rules and information flow
XrhmaConnect consists of the following three modules:
1) Account Balance Synchronization Module:
Common accounts’ balance synchronization is one of the most challenging tasks. On the one hand, there are some common customers’ and system accounts that can be debit or credit from both systems at the same time. For example, settlement in XRHMA would result to the debit/credit in a set of accounts that also exist in the banking system. In the same way, withdrawals or deposits would also debit/credit some accounts that are connected with XRHMA’s accounts. On the other hand, there are critical operations in both systems that are based on the balance of those accounts. For example, XRHMA calculates customer’s buying power in each order based on a set of policies, his weighted portfolio and his balance. In addition, the Banking System in order to decide whether a customer’s withdrawal is permitted is also based on customer’s balance. Thus, it’s more than evident that common accounts’ balances in two systems should be synchronized.
XrhmaConnect® provides a mechanism for automatic real time debits/credits in both systems. This way, money transactions and accounting entries generated into XRHMA during settlement or other operations are automatically transferred to the corresponding Banking System’s accounts. At the same time, deposits, withdrawals, interests etc posted into Banking Accounts are automatically transferred into XRHMA accounts. Thus, accounts’ balances are always synchronized. Relative messages and information flow is presented on the following diagrams:
2) Blockings of funds Module:
There are times where an order would result to a temporary amount blocking (related to this order value) in a particular account. This way, customer’s buying power would be decreased. At the same time, the same amount should be blocked at the relative account in banking system, so that a withdrawal of this amount would not be permitted. This blocking should also be updated or even released during trading as the state of its related order is changing.
XrhmaConnect® provides a special module to handle such blockings and inform the Banking System. Through this module a blocking transaction is forwarded to the Banking System (along with its updates/releases). Each such blocking can be treated as daily block or may have a specific expiration date and is released as the actual accounting entries are posted.
3) Account Reconciliation:
XrhmaConnect® provides a mechanism for account’s balances reconciliation. Balances are compared and differences are posted into a special –differ- account for further investigation. Reconciliation procedure can be executed at specific times through a batch or an on-line interface.
The following diagram presents XrhmaConnect’s overall Architecture:
Technical Specifications
To effectively address all the above issues XrhmaConnect® is based on Enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA). ESOA, is based on open standards (such as XML and WEB Services) and follows a business-driven software architecture that allows interoperability and integration with other systems. Business functionality is represented through reusable enterprise services.
XrhmaConnect’s Architecture and its technical specifications alleviate significant development inefficiencies and impediments, leading to an increased adaptability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. Furthermore, XrhmaConnect® can easily respond and adapt to changing business requirements providing low cost and effective life cycle maintenance.
Below are underlined some of the basic characteristics of XrhmaConnect®:
- “loose coupling” modelling on a highly distributed basis
- fundamentally oriented to supporting short and long-running, asynchronous transactions that scale well
- asynchronous, message-based communication (optional synchronous)
- store and forward (Queuing) communication are optional provided
- providing services are well documented and visible because the process methods, functions and objects are exposed and are self-describing.
- declarative extended configuration
As mentioned above XrhmaConnect® supports both synchronous and asynchronous communication models with optional store and forward capabilities (queuing). Furthermore, XrhmaConnect’s implementation incorporates and supports many well established communication protocols and techniques such as Web Services, MSMQ, MQS, WCF etc. The following diagrams describe the two possible communication models:
