Featured Case Studies - Invesco

INVESCO UK is part of the global AMVESCAP Group, one of the world's largest independent global investment managers. Investment is INVESCO's only business - so the Firm is able to focus all its global resources on providing its clients with the investment performance and personal service they expect.

INVESCO implemented a global, automated process to allocate and confirm client trades more quickly, accurately and cost-effectively. By increasing the degree of automation, eliminating unnecessary manual steps and improving levels of integration to legacy and third-party systems, INVESCO improved trade confirmation rates, significantly reduced exception rates and lowered post-execution costs. In addition, this centralised global model of trade processing provides to INVESCO controls, procedures and added capabilities that result in reduced operational risk and better management reporting.

Implemented using the Singularity suite of Trade Management tools, INVESCO's global trade processing operation not only handles more volume at less cost but incorporates flexibility for growth as markets expand and cost-effective processing of more complex, multi-asset trade types becomes imperative.

MOTIVATION

INVESCO set out to achieve a high level of automation of all post-trade investment processes, so that the Firm could handle growing transaction volumes at the same time as reducing overall costs. INVESCO's commitment to the use of best execution practices and its dedication to meet evolving client demands for more multi-asset trade types are drivers of the Firm's strategy in developing its back office capabilities. This forward thinking approach to technology and people is founded on INVESCO's desire to remain one of the leading investment managers globally.

CHALLENGE

EFFICIENT TRADE PROCESSING
While the number of trades executed on the world's financial markets has sprinted ahead in recent years, the average trade value has fallen dramatically, placing mounting pressure on margins and on the speed and cost efficiency of trade lifecycle processes. To profitably participate in the securities trading markets of the next decade required INVESCO to optimize their trading processes - indeed, as margins continue to shrink, efficient and flexible trade processing infrastructures will themselves offer significant competitive advantage.

PROVIDING FLEXIBILITY TO THE FRONT OFFICE
As new instruments are being traded to maximise profitability INVESCO needed to put in place an infrastructure that had inherent flexibility - flexibility to confirm, match, reconcile and settle messages in multiple formats (SWIFT, OMGEO, FIX, etc) and to handle complex trading practises.

MAKING VOLUME A NON-ISSUE
It was critical that the new trade processing environment in London and Hong Kong be able to cope with ever increasing volumes. The Firm's challenge was to reduce the level of operational costs required while at the same time coping with these additional volumes. If doing more with less in this manner could be achieved, management and staff time could then be deployed in other value-added investment operations tasks.

REDUCING OPERATIONAL RISK
While implementing a global trade processing capability INVESCO needed to ensure that risks in the end-to-end operation were reduced. The higher levels of automation, higher volumes and evolving nature of the business required that disciplines and controls be imbedded to help manage risk in all trade processes.