Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI, TOKYO:4307), a leading global provider of system solutions and consulting service, today announced an entirely revamped I-STAR, NRI’s securities back-office solution for wholesale brokerage firms, which has been rebranded as “I-STAR/CORE.” As part of the rollout, all existing I-STAR clients, including global top investment banks, have successfully migrated to I-STAR/CORE as of the end of December 2017, as scheduled.

Financial institutions’ needs are drastically diversifying in response to ever-constant innovation and system reforms in capital markets, including the shortening of JGB settlement cycles. NRI chose to revamp I-STAR, the industry’s de facto standard solution in the Japanese market, to best meet these changing needs, enabling financial institutions to keep pace with the advancement of capital market standards.

As part of the migration, NRI eliminated the mainframe system used for I-STAR and have instead implemented a server-based system for I-STAR/CORE. As a result, I-STAR/CORE provides enriched real-time processing, reliability and expandability. Users are already enjoying a significant reduction of nighttime batch and enhanced monitoring functions for exceptions. Recovery time objective is reduced by half, while security and audit functions are enhanced, and functionality is streamlined.

“We care greatly about the demands of our customers, and as we saw the popularity of I-STAR grow we made sure that we continued to listen to their functionality needs and worked diligently to provide them a solution that addressed them,” says Masaaki Yamazaki, Managing Director of NRI. “The decision to create a revamped system for I-STAR was an obvious one, and we are certain that I-STAR/CORE system will provide increased efficiency and stronger functionality for our valued customers.”

I-STAR/CORE has a dominating share in Japan’s capital markets, including 40 percent of Japanese equity system and 45 percent of Japanese derivative system.

About NRI

Founded in 1965, NRI is a leading global provider of system solutions and consulting services with annual sales exceeding $3.7 billion.

NRI offers clients holistic support of all aspects of operations from back- to front-office, with NRI’s research expertise and innovative solutions as well as understanding of operational challenges faced by financial services firms. The clients include broker-dealers, asset managers, banks and insurance providers. NRI has its offices globally including New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, with over 12,000 employees.

For more information, visit https://www.nri.com/fit/