2019/03/02

Operational Agility and Product Onboarding

by Lucido Group

Operational Agility/Product Onboarding

Most Openlink clients report frustration with the difficulty of introducing a new financial instrument to the application. This is sometimes not the result of any native feature of the application, but has arisen from customizations.

When a new instrument is traded the following components must be reviewed: capturing the trade terms and conditions, pre-trade compliance, payment calculations, risk profile, accrual, volatility, correlation, pricing, Greeks, market risk, credit risk, accounting, performance, margin calculations, reporting, interfaces, required static/reference data, and more.

Clients report to us that a new instrument type, even when it is similar to existing instrument type, can take three months to be reviewed and approved for trading. The delays to product rollouts can hamper the business and be a source of competitive disadvantage. A lack of expertise sometimes contributes to the problem, but the most common culprit is opacity of the application.

We review solution design, the data model, extension points, and downstream components for enhancements to reduce the drag on new instrument approval. Often the review will result in recommendations to simplify post-trade components, workflows, reports and interfaces. Often this service offering will require changes to code and configuration.

Contact us if you would like advice on how to improve the agility of your application.