News Archive

3 March 2000

New Finsoft System Targets Spread Betting Market

Finsoft Ltd. has introduced a spread-betting engine for the sports betting market. The engine, the first in a planned series called MarginMan, uses risk management technology and real-time functionality to boost the capacity and capability of spread betting call centres.

The first customer is Sporting Index, market leaders in sports spread betting, who went live with the engine in January.

Julian Barkes, Marketing Manager for Sporting Index, says that increasing demand for spread bets drove the decision to seek new software. "This is a cutting edge system that gives our customers the opportunity to bet on a wider range of sports and types of product than currently available anywhere else in the industry. They even have the option to bet while the event is in progress."

Finsoft, a London-based rapid applications development house, has particular expertise in risk software development. Predrag Popovic, Managing Director of Finsoft, says: "This was a £1million contract and naturally we were keen to compete. Our risk management experience comes from working for major international banks but we saw the opportunity to use our middleware and our servers for this new market."

He adds: "From the start we liked Sporting Index's enthusiasm and its reputation for innovation. We are delighted that our technology and ideas proved such a good fit." The new engine is expected to pave the way for a move into web-based fixed odds and financial spreads markets.

Finsoft's software is built around three kinds of "infrastructure independence":

- Infrastructure independence
- Business logic independence
- Presentation logic independence

In practice, the software can be quickly adapted to any operating environment.

Mr. Popovic said: "These ‘independencies’ allow a trader or manager to view the data produced by the system in any way which suits him without being constrained by the underlying architecture."

Barkes says: "Sporting Index is a very demanding customer, and Finsoft is the only one of our suppliers who runs faster than we do."