Tai Fook managed a total of HK$17 billion in 2004. To better protect its business and its clients' investment, the trading application must also able to show and predict the financial impact of disastrous events like the explosions in London last month or the event of 9/11/2001, said Ying.

"Any [such] incident around the world can bring a significant impact to our business," he said. "We need to know our bottom line and financial status even before the stock market opens."

Since 1996, Tai Fook has been using an application that predicts the business and financial impacts of different external events. As the number of customers increase and their variety of investments diversifies, the new application has extended this analysis to include new angles-like prediction of impact to certain type of clients, a particular portfolio, products or industries.

In addition to the impact from external factors, another major element in risk management system is accounts auditing. Ying said the new system is able to audit all new accounts to ensure a clean credit history.

"For example, if a person is already a client with us, we need to ensure that when his wife or his company opens a new account with us, the system is aware they are sharing the same source of capital," he said. "Being able to audit the accounts in real-time is important to mitigate risk."