Technology

Start-up to Global Regulated Group

Establish credibility with other management and board
Recruit key number 2
Invest in a true multi-currency, multi-unit general ledger package (Sun Acc.)
Participate in the development of cross border securities trading and settlement system
Integrate the trading and settlement system platform into GL
Develop automated management reports in Excel using downloads from the general ledger and macros
Perform monthly reconciliations from the trading and settlements platform to the general ledger and developing fixes where necessary
Customise reports for local accounting and regulatory reporting

With a team of less than 15 accounting staff maintained over 20 legal entities (9 regulated entities) transacting over $30 billion of principal trades across 40 markets.
Detailed management reports were prepared in excel with both month and year to date information compared with budget and previous year for all business units
All regulatory reports were filed on a timely basis with minimal queries over a 12 year period
A globally integrated settlement and trading system that had trading teams enter orders in one jurisdictions and trading teams execute in another was successfully integrated with the general ledgers of the res9ective legal entities involved in th etrade

International GAAP required us to report our financial information on a trade date basis
We provide our clients with statement on a settlement date basis
We accounted to our clients on a soft commission basis rather than on a hard currency basis (the difference being that the soft commission was an agreed multiple of the hard currency)
The functional currency for most of our legal entities was US Dollars however we allowed our clients to select their currency of choice for their account that would normally be based on the functional currency of the funds that they managed
These differing approaches made often resulted in discrepancies between the financial records and the client statements even allowing for the multiples.

Requested the technology team to build a reconciliation report would enable us to validate the following differences:

Unrealised exchange gains / losses arising from our functional currency and the client currency
Realised exchange gains / losses that arose from the trading date/settlement date accounting
Differences in the hard currency liability that arose from the trade date/ settlement date reporting

Any material unexplained differences were investigated and where necessary adjustments made

Information from these reconciliations were used in our currency hedging
The exercise was essential to give our external auditors comfort on our client balances even although the client statements technically did not form part of the accounting records
The reconciliation further validated the integration of the trading and settlement platform with the various general ledgers within the Group

As a start-up operation the availability of both cash and technology development resources was somewhat limited
As we developed management reports the scope of what could be achieved significantly increased the demand for additional information and reports
The increase in regulation further increased the need for additional reporting and controls
In an ever-changing market there was a growing demand for new and existing projects
Management was de-centralised
There was a need to prioritise the deployment of technology spend and resources.

The operations team identified the relevant input and output requirements to facilitate informed decisions on prioritisation
The technology team used this information to develop the PIERS platform (Project Initiation & Evaluation Reporting System
The platform enabled all functions to submit technology requests that were scoped by the technology teams to establish the resources
Any revenue or business development initiatives were estimated both from an incremental revenue and margin perspective
Any efficiency initiatives were estimated from a both a saving and a client experience initiative

The platform became the foundation for the group to grow and manage its technology resources
The Operations Committee reviewed the requests quarterly on a formal basis and would deal with ad hoc requests (particularly where here was a regulatory requirement for change) as and when required
The platform gave visibility across the Group’s senior management of both the projects being actioned and the pipeline of requests
The finance team carried out post implementation reviews to identify areas where individuals were over estimating benefits

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