SEC Buys Surveillance System to Monitor Growing Market

21st October 2009, www.lankabusinessonline.com

Sri Lankan markets watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), inked a 20 million dollar deal with Millennium Information Technologies (MIT) to buy an automated surveillance system.

"Presently we have a manual system. The new system will be implemented in the first quarter of 2010," Udayasri Kariyawasam, chairman of the SEC said.

Hardware and software costs are included in the 20 million rupee price tag. The hardware would be sourced from Sun Micro Systems, he said.

"The systems maintenance contract is two million rupees annually," Anush Amarasinghe, chief operating office, MIT, said. "There is a warranty period for the product."

Kariyawasam said the online surveillance system has the ability to detect suspicious trades and keep tabs on brokers.

The new system can check trading histories and to track previous transactions and identify patterns, Kariyawasam said.

"This is a tailor-made system for the SEC and has been in the pipeline for the last two to three years," Kariyawasam said.

"When we handle a big volume it's difficult to monitor the market."

He said the system would automatically generate information needed to track the market. Presently SEC investigation unit officials have to manually search the data.

"In future the system will generate the information for us to analyze," Kariyawasam said.

MIT was selected in an international tendering process opened by the SEC last year.

"MIT was not the only bidder. There were international bids and a couple of bids from India," said Channa De Silva, director general of the SEC.

The Colombo Stock Exchange electronic trading platform was also designed and built by MIT.

Amarasinghe said 17 to 18 stock exchanges, that include the London Stock Exchange and India are presently running similar systems, of which 2-3 platforms are using MIT surveillance systems.