The Brief: A $1.5bn AUM Hedge Fund needed a review of the technology platforms and how they were implemented. The background was a back office team struggling to keep up with the bookings and produce the reports required by the front office. The front office needed reassurance that they had the right technology platform from an independent (non-sales driven) source.

The solution: A comprehensive review was undertaken, firstly by gathering all the background documentation of what was in place. This was then followed up by talking to the front and back office to understand how they were using their systems and what was causing bottlenecks. Having understood what the causes were, there were a number of remedies suggested that could alleviate some of the bottlenecks and introduce some best practice to the front and back office. Additionally an RFI/RFQ template was written to help the front office engage with vendors in looking at technology platforms.

Conclusion: The report delivered highlighted the areas that did well, and make recommendations to help produce some tactical changes which would solve some of the immediate issues and prepared some documentation that would help them review some strategic systems. Changes were put in place which reduced the workload from the back office and a decision was made to defer investment into strategic systems.

The Brief: A top tier investment bank set up a captive centre in Eastern Europe and hired local software developers to work on projects relating to front office systems.

The solution: The team at thecitysecret had the domain and business knowledge which the developers at the captive centre needed. The process of onboarding the team was managed by both the Management at the investment bank, and the team at thecitysecret. This involved visits to the captive site and for the developers at the captive site visiting the offices of thecitysecret. The team at the captive site were mentored and led by the team at thecitysecret to bring them up to speed in terms of business knowledge and how the infrastructure fitted together.

Conclusion: While it is an unusual arrangement to have a consulting company managing permanent resources at an investment bank, it was a good way of bringing a team onboard. The team has since flourished and are now on the same level as the other team members on the global team.

The Brief: There were a number of issues around the end of day processes at a leading emerging markets investment bank. The requirements were to come up with a set of procedures and specifications to feed into the new strategic systems being implemented to ensure that the same procedures did not cause the same issues.

The solution: The first step was to look at the current processes, benchmark against 'best practice', the working group where then taken through a future state based on the best practice. Once the working group had agreed the future state, it went for sign off by the bank's steering committee. The final step involved writing the specifications which were given to Technology to implement.

Conclusion: Having the practical experience of working with Tier One global banks and hedge funds, thecitysecret were able to advise the bank on 'best practice' and give examples of how procedures worked in other institutions. Many of the issues had arisen as the bank had grown over a number of years and had created unforeseen problems, by conducting a thorough review and coming up with a future state based on 'best practice' the bank has a solid platform to build on.

The Brief: The client, an emerging markets investment bank, had evolved a series of in-house platforms and over time had created limitations created the size and complexity of the reference data. The brief given was to review the marketplace for a selection of vendors, guide the bank in selecting a vendor, work with the vendor and integrate the 'golden copy'.

The solution: A review of the current platform and issues was done, in parallel a light RFQ was issued to a small selection of vendors. The vendor selection criteria was based on the responses given and the strength of the references and product demonstrations. The next step was to present the vendor responses with recommendations to the key decision makers. The project costs were then calculated over a five year period, along with the project milestones, and the benefits and risks were outlined. The IT investment committee then approved the project. The next steps were working with the vendor to implement the platform, build the integration software and manage the implementation.

Conclusion: The bank needed the expertise to oversee the selection of a vendor platform and its implementation, thecitysecret were able to provide the expertise based on knowing how financial institutions work with static/reference data and where the issues lie. In addition thecitysecret were able to bring in the strategic view to building a robust platform and avoid the temptation of bringing the complex legacy data/procedures into the new platform.

The Brief: Agile is a much misused and misunderstood methodology, however, it can also be a very powerful way to build applications in an evolving business. The brief was to guide the team within the investment bank into using Agile methodologies with the projects being run.

The solution: The first step was to introduce test driven development which gave the immediate benefits of having good coverage of the code, the benefits were quickly apparent in the quality of the code. Following this, investment was made into Continuous integration and a set of reports showing statistics of test coverage and where the gaps were. The other benefits were that the users became more engaged with the shorter delivery cycles, this made the projects more successful as ambiguities in the requirements were ironed out at an early stage.

Conclusion: The practical experience at thecitysecret in running Agile projects meant that the team could quickly demonstrate the benefits to the bank and guide the teams to implementing the practical aspects of Agile. The overall benefits were in better quality software being delivered along with an improved relationship with the end users.

The Brief: Within our Investment Banking client traders needed to manage vast amounts of volatility data in order to make projections. The existing system was a mass of spreadsheet-like data grids which were hard to manage and make sense of.

The solution: thecitysecret provided expert .NET UI developers to implement a new interface that allowed much more flexibility in viewing and manipulating the data. The application presented data in both a grid a chart format and provided the users with greater control and more immediate feedback.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to provide key staff with the necessary skills and experience to meet the client's needs and provide very real value to the traders working in a high pressure environment.

The Brief: Within our Investment Banking Client a system for executing the components of a basket was already in place, but tying the executed stocks back into the baskets was a time-consuming manual process that was prone to error.

The solution: thecitysecret provided a single resource skilled in both .NET and Java development to implement a new rebalancing tool. This tool was able to take a feed of the executed stocks and push that into the basket system. In addition the data could also be provided to the risk system and FX deals could be aggregated.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to provide staff with the correct mix of skills to implement the client requirements. As a result of this the automated re-balance process generates fewer errors. Enhanced functionality was delivered that means that the tickets can be checked and adjusted before being signed off. The management of FX has been improved and the risk tools are updated immediately.

The Brief: Collateral for several clients is managed by a custodian agent. Our Investment Banking client maintains the collateral at the tri-party agent level. The agent allocates the collateral to each of the clients and makes adjustments as required. Our client's business was being held back by a lack of capacity in the existing processes.

The solution: thecitysecret provided two developers to implement a new system that could handle messaging in a variety of formats between our client's systems and the tri-party agents. The system also needed to be able to ensure regulatory compliance in tracking the movements of collateral. Net positions were required at the end of each day for reconciliation against the tri-party agent.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to provide resources with the skills and experience needed to implement a software solution that could address the issues of capacity and scalability that were limiting factors for the business of the client. In addition when the system was subsequently required to take on a whole stream of new business it needed no further modifications to handle the significantly increased volumes.

The Brief: Our Hedge Fund client deals with a number of prime brokers. Trades are given up to these brokers and a reconciliation process is required to ensure that the fund's view matches that of the brokers.

The solution: thecitysecret provides a team of developers to develop and maintain a reconciliation system. The system collects data from the prime brokers through multiple channels and in a variety of formats and transforms them to a common format for processing. The matching algorithms have been developed to match the instruments with various tolerance levels being set for the more complex multi-leg instruments.

Conclusion: The complexity of reconciliations in this particular instance presents a distinct challenge which thecitysecret was able to meet. The system has significantly reduced the time to resolve breaks allowing the fund to complete their reconciliations in a timely manner. This is key to the fund demonstrating good operational processes.

The Brief: A collection of different reports for the Swaps traders and support within our Investment Banking client were being generated through a disparate series of systems, emails and printed paper. Many of these reports were only partly utilised.

The solution: thecitysecret provided developers who were able to consolidate these reports and make them accessible through a single intranet application that allowed the traders, sales and trade support to configure the structure and contents of the reports.

Conclusion: The system developed by thecitysecret's developers resulted in better information supplied to the desk and allowing more control over what was produced. There was a significant reduction in the processing requirements, and savings on storage of the unwanted data.

The Brief: The structured products trading system used by the Market Making desk of our Investment Banking client was in need of additional development to support the issuance of new products and the changing IT infrastructure around it. The development was a mixture of Java on the server side and C# on the client side and resources with these skills could not be freed up in house.

The solution: thecitysecret provided two developers one skilled in Java and the other in C# both based in our North Yorkshire office. These developers visited the client's London offices regularly and built up a strong working relationship with the in-house teams. The on-going development of the application's server and client was done by these developers working closely together.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to provide a self contained team with the skills needed to meet the client's needs and to maintain strong and productive relationships with the in-house teams that they needed to work with.

The Brief: Our client, a major Hedge Fund in the green trading space, needed to support an existing system that had been developed in-house. The system was being supported by the original developer, a contract resource. This led to problems with key person dependency and availability of the original developer to do necessary work. The work load was relatively light and would not provide enough work for even a single full time person.

The solution: By listening closely to the customer and working with them to address their specific needs a special arrangement was reached whereby a team of 3 technology specialists who all had knowledge of the system could be made available on an ad hoc basis. The knowledge sharing within the team of effectively removes the key person dependency and allows thecitysecret to be flexible with the individual workloads. The ad hoc nature of request allows the client to manage costs and keep control of the amount of effort that is expended on supporting this application.

Conclusion: thecitysecret's focus on building effective partnerships with clients has resulted in a flexible contract that meets all of the customer's requirements without breaking their budget.

The Brief: The swap risk feed system used by our Investment Banking client was a batch based third party system. Migrating away from this system had been identified as critical to the growth of the business.

The solution: A new system was developed by a team including in-house staff and development, architecture and management resources provided by thecitysecret. The risk valuation process was migrated away from the third party system to a custom in-house valuation system running in near real time. The client leveraged our expertise and the strong relationships we had built to help manage the onsite and offsite development teams that were spread across Richmond, London, Hong Kong and New York.

Conclusion: thecitysecret's team was able to work effectively with in-house resources to design and produce a piece of software that was seen by the business as one of the most critical in Equities IT for that year. Working closely with the client meant they never lost control of the project and were involved in the whole process end-to-end. The new near real-time framework means users can detect problems intraday and make amendments and see their effect quickly and easily using new error management tools. Faster, more accurate risk will allow business growth as well as help satisfy the ever increasing regulatory requirements in the financial sector.

The Brief: A Hedge Fund client needed a more detailed view of what fee payments were owed.

The solution: thecitysecret provided developers to create a new system that could take feeds from the administrators and capture that data to a database. The data was enriched and calculations performed to produce the information that would ensure the distributors were being paid correctly. The system was designed to segregate roles across a number of legal entities and had a reporting engine written to allow custom reports and drilling down of the data.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to help the client solve The Brief in hand. The information provided gave an accurate picture of what was owed and ensured that the correct payments were needed.

The Brief: Within our Investment Banking client, the existing corporate actions processing resulted in a great deal of manual booking making it difficult to find and fix data breaks intra-day.

The solution: thecitysecret provided staff to re-engineer the capture / recovery / processing / accrual of corporate action data in the context of single stock & index equity swap trading. The back-end processing was implemented as a series of java web services with interfaces to the existing .NET front-end applications. These were then extended to provide the enriched user functionality. Amendments to the details of corporate actions were picked up as they were announced and their effects assessed. The data store was brought into line, with appropriate auditing, and economic amounts in the trading & risk systems were updated immediately.

Conclusion: thecitysecret was able to provide staff with the necessary skills and knowledge to automate parts of the client's business process. This removed the need for much of the manual processing and allowed data to remain consistent. In the process of undertaking this work, the client's own staff were fully trained in the business area and relevant technologies and are now able to operate & extend this software as future requirements come up.