Remote working during market turmoil has not affected our clients using Salerio

London, 22 June 2020 - corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, reports that its clients have enjoyed uninterrupted trade matching and settlement during lockdown – even when trading volumes suddenly spiked.

 

One example is that of leading investment management company Baillie Gifford. The Edinburgh-based firm was using proprietary post-trade processing systems before choosing Salerio in 2018 and they believe that their smooth transition to remote working conditions, without any interruption to the service they provided to their investors, was testament to the software they had installed from corfinancial.

“In March we experienced a huge increase in equity, bond and FX trades. For example, our bond trading volumes more than doubled from the previous month and over a seven-day period we had more than 500 bond trades alone. In April, our bond trading volumes went up even further, by almost another 50 percent,” said Louise Laidlaw, Head of Settlements, Baillie Gifford. “It didn’t matter how many trades came through; we knew we had the ability to cope using Salerio. Working remotely, even with these exceptional trading volumes, has had no impact on our operations whatsoever. The transition to home working was seamless and this theme came across strongly in feedback from my Settlements team.”

Since lockdown, trade settlement teams have needed secure software that enabled them to adapt to both multiple working locations and unique market conditions. Salerio was designed to handle unprecedented surges in trading volumes even while operating remotely.

Bruce Hobson, Chief Executive at corfinancial. “The system has been able to provide a remote service at the level that gold standard clients like Baillie Gifford expect, and this standard has not faltered during the unprecedented market conditions we are faced with today.”

Where Next For The Middle Office?

Middle Office

Consolidated exception management, APIs and the evolution of the middle office.

Within every process across the front, middle and back office, there are anomalies (known in asset management parlance as ‘exceptions’). Compliance, risk, corporate actions, fund accounting, Investment Book of Records, trade processing, client reporting – there are exceptions at every turn. Many asset managers have different systems for all of these processes, each generating their own list of exceptions. Even within each stage of the investment process there may well be more than one system reporting the anomalies.

Salerio - Where Next For The Middle Office?

Baillie Gifford selects corfinancial for global trade processing

Business

LONDON, 18 February 2019 - corfinancial, a leading provider of specialist software and services to the financial services sector, is supporting Baillie Gifford in establishing an end-to-end post-trade operating model.

After a detailed market evaluation process, Baillie Gifford selected corfinancials post-trade solution salerio to automate its global trade processing.

“Baillie Gifford is unique in the UK in being a large-scale investment business that has remained an independent private partnership. This ownership structure has allowed us to keep our efforts focused entirely on our clients and their investments,” said Louise Laidlaw, Head of Settlements at Baillie Gifford. We decided that it was time to transition our existing operating model to a strategic solution that encompassed the whole trade processing lifecycle. Not only were we looking for a comprehensive, automated exception management system, but also the right people to work with.

Bruce Hobson, CEO at corfinancial: “Today, investment management organizations are under increasing pressure to reduce risks, cut costs and bring efficiencies to post-trade processes. Baillie Gifford recognizes the benefits that straight-through-processing and scalability can deliver in helping the firm serve its growing international client base.”