Case Studies
Over the past few years, Finmax Tech has been able to partner with clients and develop solutions that not only addressed a specific gap in the business flow, but took it a step further by making sure the solution worked for multiple products and could be leveraged across several global locations. Finmax TRAX has been deployed into clients that range from smaller regional brokers to much larger global publicly traded firms. Here are a couple of scenarios where Finmax Tech was able to help our clients.
Large Global Brokerage Firm
Problem: Our client is a large global brokerage firm with offices in New York, London, Paris, Singapore and Sydney. They offered brokerage services for Fixed Income, FX, Emissions and other products and had begun an expansion into brokerage for Equities, Options and Futures. The expansion was through acquisitions as well as setting up additional brokerage desks, to serve customers interested in these products. Rapid expansion of this business generated a pressing need for a solution to manage broker splits, track commissions by customer and assign fees and expenses from trades accurately. Spreadsheet macros and lookup tables helped get these businesses off the ground but these had obvious scalability constraints. In addition, the Large Global Broker was expanding into these markets in the US and in Europe simultaneously. A solution that focused on addressing the need for data enrichment was required. The Large Global Broker was also in the process of expanding their brokerage offerings in other products such as OTC Options, Variance Swaps, Energy and Energy Derivatives. The Firm also had Soft Dollar and CSA Relationships that needed to be managed. A key requirement of the solution was that it must be flexible and scalable. Minimizing manual keying by processing trade data from Fidessa, GMI etc. was a critical prerequisite.
Solution: Finmax Tech had built a solution that that met the initial requirements of the firm with the ability to calculate commissions, broker splits, and fees. In addition, mechanisms to process data files to load the data and reduce manual entry came built-in. As a bonus, screens to also manually key in trades or amend trades from a blotter were also provided. Combined with static data maintenance, this offerred all the keey features the client needed. Finmax Tech was able to work with the firm to onboard in 4-6 weeks. Finmax Tech also built a real-time feed into the firms invoicing system.
Ongoing Partnership: Based on the success of the rollout of Finmax TRAX for options, Finmax Tech continued working with the firm to on-board additional products such as Natural Gas, Power, Oil and Emission.
Publicly Traded US Retail Broker
Problem: Our client is a publicly traded US Retail broker with offices all over the United States. In 2013, the firm started options brokerage business, and the business underwent expansion much faster than their middle/back office to cope with using just spreadsheets for calculating commissions and broker splits and also sending invoices to clients. The business was also trading on external venues like Fidessa and required the orders and fills to be accessible on a blotter. Ability for Electronic BlueSheets eligible data to be generated and Soft Dollar data to be fed to an internal system was also required.
Solution: The Finmax Tech TRAX for Options offered a complete front to back solution. It had modules that received Orders and Executions real-time via FIX for viewing on a flexible customizable blotter, capability to allocate the filled orders to 1 or more clearers, along with calculating commissions and broker splits. The system also included complete Invoicing and Collection tracking module that allowed the Client Service Managers to track collection against invoices and in extreme cases, also track write-offs. System also had the capability to be able to record broker advances. Finmax Tech was able to onboard this whole business flow front to back in under 8 weeks including static initialization and FIX link.
Ongoing Partnership: Finmax Tech continues working with the firm for ongoing enhancements or customized reports as needed by the desk or the backoffice.
Swaps Reporting Monitorship at Large Global Bank through Financial Consultancy Firm
Problem: Our client is a publicly traded global bank. Due to several deficiencies identified in their Swaps reporting processes. Following a legal settlement, it was determined that the remediation processes that the bank will need to undertake must go through a monitoring process under the auspices of the Southern District Court of New York (SDNY). The underlying systems processes were complex and required someone with a strong technical background.
Solution: Finmax Tech was able to bring in the requisite technical expertise based on several years of experience with system development and implementation on a global scale. In addition, because of our experience within the Financial Services industry and deep knowledge of various financial products, Finmax Tech was able to perform a very thorough review of the Swaps reporting process, identify weak points in the flow and make recommendations to help make the process robust.
Ongoing Partnership: Finmax Tech performed additional reviews and process enhancement recommendations for the banks TRACE reporting process, in which regulators had also identified deficiencies.
Liquidity Reporting at a Large Global Bank through Consultancy Firm
Problem: Our client is a publicly traded US headquartered global bank with lines of businesses that span Capital Markets, Credit Cards, Commercial Banking, Retail Banking etc. Following the liquidity gaps found in several banks during the 2008 Financial Crisis, our client was instructed by regulators in the US as well as the UK to make significant improvements in their Liquidity Management and Reporting process as well as data content.
Solution: Finmax Tech partnered with a Consultancy Firm to assist with the requisite deep dive analysis. Utilizing our experience with system flows at large global firms, and previous experience with an understanding of Liquidity reporting, we were able to step in and provide in depth analysis of data sources. Based on our understanding of reporting expectations of regulators (FED, FSA), we were able to analyze the data requirements to produce reports such as the LCR and NSFR and design a data model for the collection of data from across the firm into a centralized repository from which reporting was to be built.
Ongoing Partnership: Following the launch of the implementation phase of the project, we were subsequently invited to assist with training a group of QA professionals on how to test for the accuracy and completeness of the reports; this was done by building spreadsheet based tools which could independently produce expected results for comparison with the reports produced by the system being built out.