Technology Governance review against Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) requirements.

Following a change in the executive leadership team, the CIO of a wealth management firm became responsible for the technology aspects of the Chief Operations function (SMF24).

We supported the CIO to review the SMCR requirements and understand how the responsibilities were being fulfilled. We worked with the CIO and the Technology and Operations leadership team as well as Compliance team to ensure everyone was clear on what was expected from the regulators. Both in letter and in spirit of the regulation.

The expected outcome was that the leadership team and their respective teams had a clear understanding of the regulation and what the regulators expected.

We then compared the existing governance and responsibilities to ensure all areas were covered.

The gaps were addressed by strengthening the existing responsibilities and ownership and enhancing existing process and reporting rather than creating new roles and processes. 

This allowed the CIO to assure the Board and Compliance teams how the responsibilities were being fufilled. More importantly, the technology leadership team was clear of how they are also responsible to meet the regulation.

We later helped implement some of the simple recommendations to ensure there was consistency in the know-say-do loop.

Operating Model - Integrating different IT Infrastructure teams into one global team.

Our team worked with the UK head of IT Infrastructure to lead the strategy to merge four  Infrastructure teams across northern and southern hemispheres into one global Infrastructure team.

Our team then co-designed and implemented the operating model to merge four Infrastructure teams into one global infrastructure team with 24 hrs support. The overall merger delivered £4m+ in-year cost saving.

Amongst many other benefits, we helped to create a repeatable pattern to integrate new acquisitions into this global delivery model. This was particularly useful in new M&A deals due diligence process.

Strategy to maximise returns from 5 year data lake investment.

For the UK unit of Global Asset and Investment management firm we helped to create and implement strategy to maximise returns from their data lake investment.

The firm had spent 5+ years investing in data lake but weren't happy with the returns.

Our team did a very quick review and helped the internal teams to understand and pivot to data mesh.

We co-designed the operating model and reshaped the teams and their focus, set up federated governance functions with the business functions. Our team worked with the internal teams to pilot and then set up cross-functional data squad working with various business functions to provide insights-as-a-service for specific business challenges.

Introduced data pod to augment internal BI team capability.

For a Wealth Management firm established a data capability to augment the internal business intelligence (BI) reporting team. The data pod included data science and data engineering expertise led by strong business domain knowledge. 

We created a strong case with the team lead and secured executive buy-in and funding for the pod. Our team embedded the ways of working with same day feedback on the actionable insights from business functions. These insights and recommended actions allowed trading desks and investment managers to increase funds under management. 

The team adopted a rapid iterative approach to mature insights via proof-of-concept through to operational application of the insights.