Portfolio
Wall Street Automation: A Primer
Source: Datamation Date: 1969
In 1969 I spent full time supervising work that Informatics was doing for Wall Street Brokerage firms. We had contracts for both front end (message and transaction switching) and back office (accounting and reporting) automation. I was surprised at how complicated these applications were. This article goes into some detail on what must be done in brokerage transaction recording and accounting systems.
During the latter part of 1967, all of 1968, and the early part of 1969, it was hard to pick up any financial journal without reading an article about the problems that stock brokerage firms were having in the back-office processing of securities orders. The front office is responsible for selling securities and thereby generating a brokerage firm’s income, but the back office provides the production capabilities to process trades generated by the front office. Insufficient back-office capabilities have caused grave crises for some brokerage firms, and for the securities industry as a whole. As an example, in September of 1969 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had fined one of the largest brokerage houses $150,000 for violations of SEC regulations caused by the firm’s back office in the preceding year.
