Leading financial services firm engages Sundaram to create business efficiencies

The client’s fund administration team provides investment administration, fund accounting, unit registry service and other tailor-made services. This involves handling large volumes of data from various transactional processes (e.g. application processing, transaction processing), which are time-consuming and expensive and require effective back-office solutions.

Our process study identified problems in:

• registry management: numerous voluminous, time-sensitive preliminary activities were critical to core activities
• time-bound dealing: the client processed trades for multiple fund managers with different deadlines, making it challenging to ensure zero financial impact
• reporting: it was mandatory to accurately report on time, to the correct fund managers
• concurrent reconciliation: same-day transaction reports to fund managers required work outside of Australian business hours.

• Automation: Sundaram streamlined the payment reporting process by automating modules to communicate to multiple fund managers simultaneously. 

• Risk analysis: Sundaram used periodic failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), through a structured learning management system, to create standard operating procedures and maintain process efficiencies

• Quality orientation: via a robust incident management system driven by Six Sigma, Sundaram drove operational rigour and reviewed practices at every stage of the engagement.

• Leveraging the time difference: Sundaram conducted same-day reporting and reconciliation

• Systems health checks on portals, applications, workflows, e-mail functions: these became a daily feature and assisted in standardising operations.

Because Sundaram was set up an exclusive team to handle the preliminary registry works, the client very quickly saw improvement in accuracy and timeliness, seamlessly making way for dependent activities. Our multi-layered review not only resulted in a reduction in manual intervention but also eliminated privacy breaches.

The business impact was that the client could focus on value-added activities, because of its decision to transition high-end activities like reporting functions and quality assurance from fund services to the client’s outsourced business solutions provider - Sundaram Business Services. Over time, our client invested more heavily in its Sundaram outsourced workforce, increasing the number of staff threefold, as the number of fund managers increased fourfold.