Banking

The credit crunch has left no room for argument about the need for transparency. In the maelstrom, the complex algorithms and obsolete systems on which many risk directors relied proved useless. Today, senior directors need to know precisely how their organisations are performing day by day, and sometimes hour by hour. A proliferation of reports in different formats from incompatible systems is no longer enough, if it ever was.

What’s needed is transparency of operations across the organisation, offering a consolidated view through a unified system of reporting. But those who are charged to realise this vision often balk at the challenge. They may believe that cost and disruption will outweigh the gains. They may be faced with a legacy of under-investment in systems and technology during the boom years.

At Blueprint, we have been there before. We have strong credentials in developing reporting systems for the banking sector. We understand the business requirements and how to translate them into a technical specification that will get results quickly. Often, we begin with a discrete risk area that offers a clear and visible ‘win’. Only then do we move on to test the ‘nirvana scenario’. Without prejudice, we investigate the business issues, review the data, and deliver a plan. Our customers are often surprised at how much can be achieved within an acceptable time frame.

The benefits: consolidated reporting and sweeping simplification - fewer reports delivered faster, generated to order by the user via customised portals or dashboards, in the desired format.

These are among the issues we are currently working on with our banking customers:

1. Risk: ‘Keeping an inventory of our risks is no problem. What we need to understand is how they correlate over time. How are risks changing, and what effect do they have on each other? Are we taking on more risk? Are certain risks not being managed and mitigated effectively?’
2. Market positions: ‘I would like to be able to monitor all our trading positions against our limits in real time and on one screen. But in order to do that, I estimate that I would have to go from 700 reports down to seven. How big an ask is that?’
3. Regulatory reporting and accounting: ‘The FSA, the SEC, MIFID, Basel 2, Sarbox… and who knows what’s coming next? We need a unified system of reporting and accounting that shows us the consequences of our decisions for each of the different regulatory regimes under which we operate.’
4. Client reporting: ‘Our institutional clients demand complex consolidated reporting in a variety of different formats. How do we offer such flexibility from so many systems? How do we provide accurate tax reporting to wealth management customers with the right logic in multiple tax domains?’
5. Human resources: ‘Rather than make good people redundant, I would like to explore how we could re-allocate them, especially when markets may be recovering. To help me do that, I would like a system that sees though the titles on their business cards to their underlying skills and experience.’
6. Business development: ‘Who owns each client relationship? Who else should we get involved? What are we doing to sustain and develop the relationship? How should we target our marketing?

Interested to know more? Contact Tim Reason on 020 7832 1858 or email treason@bpms.co.uk