Case Study: Operational Effectiveness - Equities Back Office
The Client
A major European Investment Bank.
The Challenge
The cash equity business had forecast a large volume increase from the retail bank. The capital markets back office system was nearing capacity and would not be able to process these volumes.
The assignment was to investigate the current systems to determine the volumes at which that capacity would be reached and the timing, then to propose a new target platform to align the IT service with the business strategy.
Internal proposals had also been made to ring-fence Operations which could then be offered to the market as an independent service. The brief included a feasibility study for this proposition.
The Solution
A detailed architecture of current systems highlighting bottlenecks which were targeted for immediate remedial attention in order that the business could continue to function in the short-term.
A longer-term strategic approach to determine the optimal architecture at both the system, functional and process levels. A detailed system selection of third-party applications plus a high level business design for a new internal system development.
A recommendation to postpone the promotion of Operations as a market service until it could be run internally as a profit centre.
The Outcome
A strategic target platform (a combination of third-party applications integrated with in-house developed software) and the roadmap for its implementation were agreed by the business. The recommendation included tactical technology solutions to address the immediate capacity issues.
The Operations in-sourcing service proposal was deferred for review once the target platform had been delivered.