CASE STUDY

Middle/Back Office Assessment & Transformation

Client Type

Proprietary trading entity (non-broker dealer)
150 traders with approximately 800 accounts spread over a handful of credit counterparties. 

Challenges

  • The current environment was built from legacy systems, processes, vendors and service providers.  As the firm has grown in complexity the infrastructure has not kept pace.  
  • Credit counterparties (Prime Brokers in particular) are having difficulty digesting the daily trade flow without manual effort; especially when there are special situations, deals, trade breaks or corporate actions.  
  • Credit counterparties concerned of the inherent operational risks imbedded in the current modus operandi, are hesitant to have their market share grow because of it.  
  • Internally, P&L for each trader is available on a nightly basis, but many processes are still “high touch” and require effort by operations to clean up.

Deliverables: Current State Assessment

  • Provided a complete operations assessment of front, middle and back office
  • Performed a cross-functional review of the current state by product with the identification of key gaps and recommendations that impacted people, processes, and technology.  
  • All control areas reviewed: trade management, clearance & settlement, asset servicing, operations control, compliance, accounting & finance, securities lending & borrowing, treasury management, technology & systems and service providers.
  • The review of service providers included Administrators, Prime Brokers, OTC credit providers, repo counterparties, custody banks, technology workflow and trading vendors.

Deliverables: Middle/Back Office Transformation

  • Transformed back office to represent industry-standard controls and protocols
  • Successfully recruited for the head of operations
  • Created the first stage of the middle office which included analytics for margin, liquidity, cash & collateral management, securities borrowing and counterparty credit risk.

OUR SERVICE

Supporting Business Development and Client Management

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