Intelligent Agent Supported Exception Management in Securities Trading

With rising trading volumes in securities transactions and increasing risks faced by global financial firms and markets, STP (Straight Through Processing) is internationally recognized by the securities industry, which is to manage securities trades throughout the trade lifecycle automatically and without human intervention. However, while attempting to achieve STP, care must be taken to ensure that trades giving rise to risk, or trades containing errors, are detected and reconciled at the earliest opportunity. In this paper we focus on the exception management in securities transactions, which attempts to pass the trade information within the trade lifecycle in a timely and accurately fashion. In our system, various classes of intelligent agents are proposed for exception management in securities trading. Monitoring agents keep track on the trading processes; a diagnostic agent is to identify the problems when monitoring agents find exceptions; a resolution agent will take some initiatives to resolve problems based on the output from the diagnostic agent. Collaboration within such agents will enhance the ability of exception management for STP.