Alpha were engaged by a major European bank to assist in the review of their current PC operations and charging structure and to develop a business case to improve efficiency and client service. Alpha successfully managed the transition of client portfolios from existing systems to a new operations platform and managed the change of the primary custodian. Alpha also managed the client communication.

The project enabled the de-commissioning of a legacy system, increased operational efficiency, enabled direct market access trading, reduced custody costs, enabled contract note production and secured Private Client revenue.

Alpha were engaged to review the existing Risk management environment at a global asset manager and to provide a clear roadmap to reaching full implementation of enterprise investment risk management.

Risk management was considered an integral part of the portfolio design process which was seen as the ultimate goal of the enterprise-wide initiative. On arrival of Alpha, this was being performed by a number of locally built solutions and these needed to be incorporated into the overall solutions where they were deemed appropriate.

Included in the scope were very specific customer orientated requirements:

• Cater for all levels of customer capability – not all customers have the same level of understanding of risk measures
• Providing demonstrative risk guarantees to customers while maintaining the ability to outperform – encouraging existing customers to invest more money.

Alpha suggested that the client needed to formally measure risk before it could be managed appropriately. The client needed to converge toward a single risk number - a single, consistent and symmetrical risk model as the “official” way of measuring risk for clients and internal audiences alike.

Alpha were engaged to provide a strategy for identifying, measuring and managing all the major factors driving the return / risk of a portfolio, both strategically and tactically.

Alpha is programme managing the integration of the back office of a major European asset manager with an outsource provider following the asset manager’s acquisition by a UK based player.

The acquirer has a long-term outsourcing contract and will thus merge the European asset manager’s back office onto the same platform. The acquisition will more than double the assets under administration. To support the new business, the outsourcer will develop new UK capabilities for client reporting and performance measurement as well expand its geographical scope to support US operations.

The Alpha team is responsible for overall project co-ordination and business case development and is also developing, with the outsourcer’s team, the new operating model which will support the new business requirements.