The Griffon Group, L.L.C.

Pricing Central Overview
Pricing Central is a centralized global pricing application designed by The Griffon Group to sit at the center of the pricing process, facilitating the management of multiple vendor feeds and improving the flow and control of common pricing information used by multiple systems on multiple platforms. It can communicate with a large number of external vendors, and interface with multiple internal client systems including accounting, decision support, compliance, custodial, data warehouse, and/or trading systems.

Centralizing the pricing process around Pricing Central allows for immediate gains in productivity and accuracy, eliminating inconsistent verification checks and controls often associated with fragmented, de-centralized pricing processes. Firms utilizing Pricing Central might realize cost savings through staff reductions and/or through the elimination of costly and embarrassing pricing errors.

Pricing Central Highlights

Price Verification Checks
Pricing Central allows the users to perform a consistent series of user-definable verification tests on all prices received from the vendors prior to their distribution to downstream systems. Some of the verification checks include, but are not limited to the following:

- Comparing the relative price movement of one security to that of a benchmark security
- Validating the price of a security across multiple price providers
- Checking for prices that have been ‘stale’ for a definable number of days
- Verifying the bid and ask spread
- Checking for securities that have not traded recently

In most of the verification tests, the user has the ability to pre-set their own tolerance levels depending upon the desired level of scrutiny.

Flexible-User Defined File Formats
Although the application already comes with a wide variety of pre-defined file formats compatible with many existing industry standards, Pricing Central also allows the user to define additional import and export file formats for both internal client systems and external market data vendors. This flexible-file functionality empowers the users with the ability to tailor the pricing application to accept new and/or updated vendor feed and client system formats quickly and effortlessly.

On-Line Research
Pricing Central provides the users with the on-line ability to review the results of each of the tests performed, and accept the input of research and analytical comments by multiple users to further explain the various price movements and exceptions. These flexible reports can be distributed to all necessary parties either electronically or through hard copy printouts. If necessary, Pricing Central will allow users to integrate a third party reporting tool into the system for the purposes of creating ad-hoc queries and reports. This may include, but is not limited to, PowerBuilder, InfoMaker, and Crystal Reports.

European Union and Exchange Rates
Pricing Central is a multi-currency pricing application designed to accept and distribute securities denominated in both the new ‘Euro’ currency and/or the national currencies of the participating countries. In addition to the Euro, Pricing Central also prices spot and forward exchange rates and points.

Multiple Prices and Identifiers
Pricing Central has the ability to store multiple prices from multiple pricing sources for the same instrument each day. If necessary, Pricing Central will readily support intra-day pricing, giving the client the ability to value an instrument at periodic intervals throughout the day.

International Locations
Depending on the client’s requirements, Pricing Central has the flexibility to be used in multiple International offices as is or with modest modifications. Pricing Central supports all of the major international date and currency conventions, and is fully 'Year 2000' compliant.

Unique Pricing Methodologies
Pricing Central automates many of the more unconventional pricing procedures currently performed in external spreadsheet applications such as Excel and Lotus. This list includes, but is not limited to:

- Mortgage Backed Pool pricing
- Matrix pricing of Cash and Cash Equivalent securities
- Foreign and Local pricing of Thai and Indonesian securities

As every client will most certainly have different pricing needs, The Griffon Group will work closely with them to develop workable solutions on a case by case basis.

Business Calendar
Pricing Central has a business calendar that, if necessary, provides the users with the functionality to use the previous day's price for securities that trade on markets that are not open for the current business day. This functionality allows users to quickly price securities for the current day without having to obtain prices from multiple pricing sources.

Audit Functions
Pricing Central has built in functionality that audits all of the critical information within the application, including the tracking of all additions, changes, and deletions to information by individual users. It also has an inquiry function that allows users to review the audit information on-line or in hard copy form. With this functionality, managers will be better able to maintain the integrity of the data, and/or establish daily reconciliation procedures.

User Password Levels
Pricing Central has user definable password functionality, giving managers the ability to grant various levels of access to individual users or to groups of users. This provides managers with the latitude to grant certain users varying levels of access, whether it be ‘supervisory’ access for the managers or ‘guest’ access for auditors or satellite reporting purposes.

Technology
Pricing Central is a client/server application. The GUI portion of the application was created using PowerBuilder. Windows 95 /98 and NT GUI clients are supported. The server portion of the application is a combination of a Sybase SQL Server database and several server processes created using C/C++. The Sybase database can run on any of the Sybase supported platforms. The C/C++ server processes currently run on HP-UX 10.20, with additional UNIX operating systems targeted for future support.

Example of a Fragmented Pricing Process

Fragmented Pricing Process BEFORE Pricing Central

Example of a Pricing Environment with Pricing Central

Pricing Environment WITH Pricing Central

 For further information and/or a demonstration, please contact The Griffon Group.