Credit Suisse is a multinational financial services headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. Astor Wells was brought in as a consultant for two major strategic initiatives.
Project 1: Loan origination and Loan portfolio risk management
Business Case
The client used two systems to manage their commercial loan portfolio, one to underwrite loans, and the other to manage their $60 billion loan portfolio. When a loan is granted to a client, it takes 24 hours before CS’s portfolio managers see it in their books. This time gap leaves their PM’s guessing their risk exposure. Management decided to integrate the two independent systems so any portfolio changes are immediately reflected in their books and meet Basel III regulations.
Expertise
- Analysis & Design
- Realtime Messaging (via XML)
- Testing & QA (1100 test cases)
- Data Flow & State Transition Diagrams
Project highlights
The project was released into production and was operational from day one. The functional and technical design documents produced by Astor Wells were instrumental in coordinating development efforts by application development teams from both underwriting and portfolio management as well as offshore developers. In total, approximately two dozen developers, PMs, and BAs were involved.
Project 2: Inter-company Collateral Management for OTC derivatives
Business Case
One of the most serious weaknesses revealed by the 2008 financial crisis was the lack of automation in Collateral Management. In its aftermath, AcadiaSoft was founded through collaboration between major financial institutions, including eight Fed banks, to satisfy ISDA Collateral Requirements. The goal was to automate the manual process of phone calls and emails to process collateral calls and the associated paperwork electronically.
Skills
- Analysis & Design
- Realtime Messaging
- Testing & QA
- Process Work Flow
- Software Development (C# .NET)
Project highlights
Astor Wells and its software development affiliate worked with AcadiaSoft to incorporate real time collateral messaging into CS’s existing collateral management software. With hundreds of millions of dollars in collateral calls a day, it was essential that there would be no disruption to existing business. AW performed thorough testing of all uses cases, developed a roll-out plan, and the software was released into production without incident. As a result, automation of the normal, day to day collateral calls resulted in reduced errors, faster processing, and allowed the collateral staff to work on other value-added projects.