Front Office Sponsor at a Global Asset Manager: “We are changing our primary source for pre, in-flight and post-trade analytics…”

Changing the golden source for trade analytics is not a simple ‘lift and shift’ activity, rather it requires a deep understanding of the ‘as is’ state and if any be-spoke house measures have been engineered in that need to be considered to the full analytics capabilities of the new provider.

The business case to use a new analytics vendor were clear :

  • Single golden source of analytics to be used across the entire company
  • Improved asset type converge and Improved transparency on analytics generation
  • Scope for Front-Office users to self-service on analytics Q&A
  • A more stable technology platform to support increasing client volumes
  • Enhanced reporting capabilities to support AUM growth activities
  • Stronger and more robust operating model to support global daily batches

What was not so clear initially was the scope of in-house measures that had been applied to the legacy vendor and these needed to be either replicated on the new platform or a ‘prove out’ exercise performed with Front Office to validate that the vendor native analytics were either equal to superior.  This required a number of workshops with the project team, data governance, front office and the new vendor to step through first-principles calculations on complex security types such ABS, MBS, RMBS and OTC derivatives.

Our consultants had the depth of product knowledge to steer the project team, speak the same language as Front Office and also have the product expertise to challenge the new vendor as required.

In addition, a number of POCs were run at both security and portfolio level to elevate confidence levels with Front Office that the new analytics provider was proving both superior risk analytics and that the migration would be seamless with validation checkpoints throughout. Our consultants also ensured the requirements for all other stakeholders were met such as compliance, regulatory risk reporting,  sales and marketing.

One of the key strengths of our consultants is the ability to put themselves in the shoes of different stakeholders, whilst being able to look at a project top-down or bottom-up.

They don’t just see the project, they see the big picture and have the skills to deliver across multiple horizons on time and on budget.