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Program Management Services
Industry Mandate
In order to improve the efficiency of options processing, a decision has made to standardize how options will be identified when sending information between computer systems and industry entities. Options will be explicitly identified with a unique 21 character symbol. Adopting these symbols will greatly reduce the practice of assigning ad-hoc symbol designations for options and the new symbology will provide a consistent and unambiguous method for identifying an options underlying security, strike price and expiration date. This migration is scheduled for completion by May 2010 and will be executed in multiple phases.
Customer Impact
Customers have been advised to begin setting aside the resources and budget necessary to modify their systems in order to work with the new symbolgy. Adopting this symbology will affect:
 Market data systems
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Trade execution systems
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Clearing & settlement systems
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Client position and portfolio management
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Corporate action processing
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The industry is scheduling a series of street wide testing dates where customers can test with all other entities that are involved in their options processing work flow.
West Highland OSI Program
West Highland Support Services has launched an OSI customer migration program designed to help clients implement the changes needed in order to comply with the industry mandate. With this service, customers receive the following:
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An inventory of all systems within the enterprise that are affected by the change in option symbology
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Specifications describing how each affected system needs to be modified in order work with the new symbols
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A strategy for executing the projects within the organization
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A project plan aligning the customer’s work streams with industry milestones
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A subscription to a bi-monthly newsletter tracking testing dates and milestones
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Coordination of street wide testing (Optional)
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Work stream project and program management (Optional)
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Staff supplementation (Optional)
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Readiness certification (Optional)
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Participating in West Highland’s OSI Program will help to ensure that customers are prepared for these changes and in a position to execute a well defined project that has been aligned to both their resource availability and industry milestones.
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