Jan 29, 2024, by Andy Efstathiou
Financial institutions are rapidly starting or growing existing wealth and asset management businesses. In the U.S., wealth assets under third-party management have grown over the last five years by 16.8% CAGR to 2023 (Source: Statista). Wealth advisors are looking to continue to invest in and grow their wealth management businesses because they see continued growth coming from:
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May 15, 2023, by Andy Efstathiou
The securities industry is moving towards shorter settlement cycles to reduce risk and increase efficiency. The last reduction in settlement windows in the U.S. was in September 2017 when settlements moved from T+3 (three-day settlement) to T+2. In February 2023, the U.S. SEC announced that all companies trading securities on U.S. exchanges needed to move to T+1 settlement by May 28,[...]
Nov 03, 2020, by Andy Efstathiou
It has been extensively reported that industries requiring in-person interaction, such as travel and entertainment, have been adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Less obvious has been the impact on industries that are often typified by remote delivery. For example, the wealth and asset management industry is primarily driven by the long-term buildup of wealth and involves in[...]
Aug 29, 2019, by Andy Efstathiou
Improving efficiency and reducing manual processing of trade finance services has been a difficult challenge for over a century. However, the industry is on the cusp of a transformation which promises to standardize and automate this highly idiosyncratic, manual ecosystem. This blog identifies some of the key trends in trade finance transformation and how one vendor, Capgemini, is su[...]
Dec 14, 2016, by Andy Efstathiou
Most FinTech engagements to date, with the exception of Blockchain, have been focused on consumer banking, a business characterized by high volume, high standardization, and low value transactions. By contrast, commercial banking is characterized by low volume, high customization, and high value transactions. And from an operational perspective, commercial banking uses higher value e[...]
Sep 23, 2016, by Andy Efstathiou
NelsonHall attended the IBM Forum for Financial Services event in New York this past week, which focused on how bank customers are using IBM’s cognitive offerings. IBM has been investing heavily in services and technologies to enable deeper insight into financial institutions’ customers, starting 18 months ago with the development of Watson-based analytic assets.
IBM’s the[...]
Mar 16, 2016, by Andy Efstathiou
Financial institutions are seeking to deepen their operational capital in order to drive down cost of operations, increasing fixed cost and reducing variable cost (non-linear cost reduction). Here we look at two examples of how institutions are achieving this by partnering with third party operations vendors.
Capital Markets Client with Broadridge
In this example, Broadridge is providing a p[...]
Jan 21, 2016, by Andy Efstathiou
There has been a recent spate of acquisitions and partnerships among Financial Services BPS vendors which reveals interesting trends. These include the following deals from 2015:
HCL and CSC: Two JVs were formed, whereby HCL will operate and expand the existing Core Banking business of CSC. The first JV will focus on account management and delivery governance while the second [...]
Nov 03, 2015, by Andy Efstathiou
The major capital markets custodian firms recently reported Q3 2015 financials. The custodians provide critical operations support to global capital markets, and their performance provides an early warning measure of the state of the capital markets industry in general. Here we look at the performance indicators for BNY Mellon, State Street, and Northern Trust, reflect on the implications for the [...]
Sep 17, 2015, by John Willmott
HCL began its robotics program in late 2013. Since then HCL has invested ~$1.5m in robotics, (ToscanaBot Automation Framework), via its HCL ToscanaBot center of excellence, which currently employs a team of ~25 personnel and is planned to grow to 50+ personnel by 2016. HCL estimates that its robotics practice currently has an FTE impact of around 2,000 with this expected to grow to ~8,000 FTE impa[...]
May 13, 2015, by Andy Efstathiou
Today’s capital markets industry is severely capital constrained, and this is likely to get worse over the next few years. Internal deployments of new or improved solutions will become harder to resource (both in terms of cash and manpower), and managed services will be the preferred way to improve operations. Furthermore, managed services that offer to improve process and/or vendor manageme[...]
Apr 07, 2014, by John Willmott
HCL has launched a service called EFaaS, Enterprise Function as a Service, to address reducing the operations costs of organizations through creation of specialized utilities. The service is initially targeted at capital markets firms, retail banks, and insurance companies and at the finance, procurement, HR, risk & compliance, legal and marketing functions.
The EFaaS service has arise[...]