Pirum is a UK-based financial services technology vendor, headquartered in the

City of London The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...

. Pirum was co-founded in 2000 as a

securities lending In finance, securities lending or stock lending refers to the lending of securities by one party to another. The terms of the loan will be governed by a "Securities Lending Agreement", which requires that the borrower provides the lender with co ...

post trade vendor, specializing initially in the

reconciliation Reconciliation or reconcile may refer to: Accounting * Reconciliation (accounting) Arts, entertainment, and media Books * Reconciliation (Under the North Star), ''Reconciliation'' (''Under the North Star''), the third volume of the ''Under the ...

of open and pending securities lending trades and billing. Over the years, the product offering has expanding into collateral services and other areas that required

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

. Pirum's client base includes over 100

financial institution A financial institution, sometimes called a banking institution, is a business entity that provides service as an intermediary for different types of financial monetary transactions. Broadly speaking, there are three major types of financial ins ...

s including

investment banks Investment banking is an advisory-based financial service for institutional investors, corporations, governments, and similar clients. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by und ...

asset managers Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of all value for which a group or entity is responsible. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as complex process or manufacturing plants, infrastru ...

pension fund A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any program, fund, or scheme which provides pension, retirement income. The U.S. Government's Social Security Trust Fund, which oversees $2.57 trillion in assets, is the ...

insurance companies Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect ...

and Agent Lenders (companies who lend assets on behalf of other parties).

History

Prior to 2000, securities lending was a growing business with most financial service employees based onshore (ie. in North America, UK, Europe, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Australia etc). In 2000, demand started to arise for automation and standardisation amongst those financial institutions. In June 2000, Pirum Systems was founded in London by Rupert Perry and Jeff Armstrong with the objective of providing automated internet-based solutions for these market participants, through providing a secure reconciliation service for both open securities lending trades and for their monthly billing. Pirum is the Latin name for pear tree and was used as the company name because PEAR derives from the names of Pirum's founders: Rupert PErry and Jeff ARmstrong.

Services

Pirum provides the following automation services to its clients:

Core

* Open and pending trade compare * Custody reconciliations * Billing comparison * Billing delivery

Pirum Live

Mark to market Mark-to-market (MTM or M2M) or fair value accounting is accounting for the "fair value" of an asset or liability based on the current market price, or the price for similar assets and liabilities, or based on another objectively assessed "fair" ...

functionality * Collateral and RQV services, with links to

BNY Mellon The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, commonly known as BNY, is an American international financial services company headquartered in New York City. It was established in its current form in July 2007 by the merger of the Bank of New York an ...

JP Morgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. (stylized as JPMorganChase) is an American multinational finance corporation headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States, and the world's largest bank by mark ...

and

Euroclear Euroclear, or the Euroclear Group, is a Belgium-based financial market infrastructure group that specialises in the central securities depository (CSD) segment. It traces its origins to the Euro-clear System developed in 1968 by Morgan Guaranty (a ...

Triparties * Returns automation * CCP functionality with

Eurex Eurex Exchange is a German derivatives exchange which primarily offers trading in European based derivatives. The products traded on this exchange vary from German and Swiss debt instruments to European stocks and various stock indexes. All tran ...

* Data services with

Markit Markit was a British financial information and services company that focused on credit derivative pricing. It was founded in 2003 and merged in 2016 with IHS to form IHS Markit. Prior to its merger it had 4,500 employees in 21 offices worldwi ...

* Cash prepay reconciliations The real-time Live services are used by more than 30 of Pirum's clients.

Involvement in the global industry

Pirum are an associate member of the

International Securities Lending Association The International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) is an industry association representing the common interests of securities lending and financing market participants across Europe, Middle East and Africa (MENA). Its membership of over 180 f ...

(ISLA), and regularly attend and/or sponsor industry events.

New ownership

In February 2015, Five Arrows Principal Investments, the mid-market private equity fund backed by the Rothschild Group, and Camwell Management LLP agreed to acquire an interest in Pirum. The two co-founders of Pirum, Rupert Perry and Jeff Armstrong, remained with Pirum as shareholders, whilst Donal Smith joined Pirum's board of directors as non-executive chairman, and Rajen Sheth became CEO.

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Financial services companies established in 2000 Securities (finance) Financial services companies based in the City of London