From managing high volumes of transactions and maintaining liquidity to ensuring regulatory compliance across jurisdictions, investment banks, broker-dealers, and market makers grapple with a similar set of challenges around operational efficiency. 

Addressing these challenges can be difficult in highly fragmented markets where transactions must be processed at speed using a range of back-office systems. The competitive nature of capital markets is also a factor, and organisational processes must be as agile as possible to adapt to new market conditions and meet changing client mandates. 

Automation and digitalisation are becoming essential to addressing these challenges. Automation shows particular promise when applied to workflows. Currently, many organisations rely on outdated technologies like spreadsheets, as well as phone calls and messaging to complete key processes including matching and negotiation, order management, confirmations, and settlement. As well as adding delays to trading processes, this inefficient approach increases the risk of errors.

By automating these processes using digital- and cloud-first technologies such as the Wematch platform, firms can unlock significant efficiency benefits. Time-consuming manual workflows are replaced by simple one-click processes which, in the case of Wematch, can drive up to 30% daily time savings per trade. Wematch further drives efficiency by bringing greater transparency to workflows and enabling a single view of all dealing activity.

Another area that can benefit from automation and digitalization is inter- and intra-team communication. Sales-to-trader workflows in the Total Return Swaps (TRS) market are a good example. Currently, these workflows are complex and time-consuming and act as a drag on operational efficiency. Client firms, sales teams, and traders communicate back and forth via chat tools and voice calls to discover, agree, and confirm a price before executing a trade. 

Once again, automated workflows can come to the rescue. Wematch’s Sales-to-Trader module, for example, makes it easier for teams to share data on common trades and communicate across teams with ease. We replace multiple workflow and communications tools with a single, easy-to-use, cloud-based digital platform that integrates trade data and processes to provide clients, sales teams, and traders with a common, real-time view of end-to-end TRS trades.

In the drive for greater operational efficiency, financial institutions can get a quick win by digitising and automating their key workflows. The result will be quality-assured processes with errors and omissions eliminated, along with streamlined operations, with messages and workflow managed in one place. 

To learn more about Wematch.live, please reach out.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

The views and opinions expressed are for informational and educational purposes only as of the time of the writing/production and may change at any time. The material may contain “forward-looking” information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections, forecasts, estimates of market returns, and proposed or expected portfolio composition. All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy, reliability or completeness of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information and it should not be relied on as such.