Automate corporate actions
You can automate coupons, expirations and bond call runs in the system. FA allows you to schedule a process that goes through all securities in the system and runs corporate actions based on the payment dates defined for these securities. You can also launch this process from the FA Back Tools menu to run corporate actions immediately and create the transactions right away.
Note that for coupons, the system can only create one coupon at a time per bond security (the next coupon), not all future coupons.
The following sections describe the steps to setting up and defining the corporate actions for coupons, expirations, or calls, and the process of scheduling the creation of the coupon, expiration, or call transactions.
Step 1 - Define bond payment settings for coupons or expirations
Before creating or running coupon or expiration corporate actions, make sure the bonds for which you want to generate coupon payments or expirations have defined payment settings in the Security window, Extra info tab in FA Back. For details on the available settings, see Extra info in FA Back reference.
Step 2 - Define the corporate actions
Define the settings for the process that runs corporate actions:
Go to Tools → Corporate actions → Create coupons and expirations.
Fill in the fields:
- Enable scheduling
Option to enable scheduling for the process that creates and runs corporate actions for coupons, expirations and calls. Tick this checkbox and define the schedule in the Scheduled functions window (see Step 3 - Schedule corporate actions).
- Corporate actions to generate
The corporate action types to generate (coupons, expirations, or calls). You can select multiple types.
- Run
Date when the corporate action is run, both when scheduling the process and launching it manually. You have the following options:
Never - never creates corporate action transactions
On coupon date - creates corporate action transactions on the coupon record date based on your settings
Transaction date (ex-div date) - creates corporate action transactions on the coupon transaction date (date when the coupon payment is made) based on your settings
Immediately - creates the corporate action transactions immediately based on your settings
- Time (coupon, exp. or call)
The time when the system generates the corporate actions. You can define separate times for coupons, expirations, and calls. Define the time as HH:mm (for example, 15:32).
- Run generated corporate actions against
The portfolios to which transactions are created during corporate action runs. This selection does not affect which corporate actions are created, only the corporate action runs. The system creates corporate actions in the selected portfolios for bonds that are missing them. When the corporate actions are run, the corresponding transactions are then created to the selected portfolios.
- Security types
The security types for which coupons, expirations, or calls should be generated.
- Days back
The number of days in the past for which the system should check for previous coupons.
- Days forward
The number of days in the future for which the system should check for upcoming coupons.
- Transaction types
The transaction type of the coupon, expiration, or call transactions.
- Reconciliation days profile key
The key of the custom profile that determines the number of reconciliation days (see Profile definitions in FA Back reference). Reconciliation days are used for certain bonds where coupons are paid out to whomever owned them a certain number of days before the coupon date.
- Assignee
Not used.
- Priority
Not used.
- Due date
Not used.
If you want to generate the corporate actions once, click Save and run. If you want to schedule the corporate actions so the system generates them at specific intervals, click Save and exit and proceed to Step 3 - Schedule corporate actions.
Check the list of corporate actions to be created. In the example below, coupon payment corporate actions are created. The Created column shows "X" for the MSPJ bond, indicating that a corporate action related to the bond is already in the system, so no new corporate action will be created for it. For the other bonds, the Created column shows "-" which indicates no corporate action exists currently and it will be created.
Click Done.
The system creates all upcoming coupon transactions to the selected portfolios. Note that you may not see any transactions in the portfolios right away, because generating them takes a moment. Refresh the portfolio after a moment to see the transactions.
Step 3 - Schedule corporate actions
After you defined the settings for creating and running corporate actions, you can schedule the system to generate them at specific intervals:
Go to Tools → Administer → Scheduled functions and select the coupons and expirations corporate action process in the list.
Click Add and fill in the schedule fields (for details, see Scheduling processes in FA Admin guide).
Click Save.
When the corporate actions have been scheduled, you can see the upcoming coupon and expiration runs in the Corporate action view.