[ T H O U G H T
L E A D E R S H I P ]
Dashboard dynamics
Consumers have had, for some time, the ability to shape service provision and get instant
access to information within their personal lives. How do these changing expectations and
dynamics impact the securities services environment? Deutsche Bank explains how post-
trade processes are being transformed by robotic process automation and data analytics
D
eutsche Bank’s Securities Services
team has adopted a collaborative and
agile delivery approach to ensure focus
on projects that deliver benefits to our
clients in the near-term.
To drive this effort, we have embraced
the following three steps:
1. Working closely and collaboratively
with the client to understand the real
problems encountered in their day-to-
day business, as well as by their end
user clients.
2. Identifying a contained problem with
the client to solve through focused,
small pilot projects rather than a
wholesale change that takes longer and
may not keep pace with technological
change.
3. Bringing together business knowl-
edge and technical specialists across
locations to ensure we have the experts
working on solving the true problem in
the right way.
Jeslyn Tan, global head of product man-
agement, Securities Services Deutsche
Bank, explains that this approach has ena-
bled the team to problem-solve in a way
that allows multiple users with similar
issues to benefit from the same solution.
“This means we can deliver at least one
tangible benefit without the need to ramp
up resources,” she says.
This three-step approach has already led
to two successful project deliveries in 2018.
• Partnering with a global custodian
client to achieve greater efficiency by
addressing problems related to trade
settlement status, cut-off times and
market deadlines; and
• Collaboration between securities ser-
vices and the Deutsche Bank Data Labs
in Dublin to build insights into cash
liquidity usage.
28
Global Custodian
Fall 2018
Improving the efficiency of trade settle-
ment status
In June 2018, a collaborative partnership
between Deutsche Bank Securities Ser-
vices and BNY Mellon was announced.
This has resulted in the streamlining of
settlement status queries for the global
custodian’s end clients. End client queries
that required conversations between
the global custodian and Deutsche Bank
staff as well as information from multiple
systems can now be answered in seconds,
providing an enhanced client experience
and a more cost-effective process.
At the start of the partnership, Deutsche
Bank engaged with the client to achieve
a common understanding of their pain
points and identify a priority pilot prob-
lem: obtaining timely trade settlement
status updates for the Hong Kong market.
Deutsche Bank leveraged Symphony, a
widely used, secure, cloud-based finan-
cial markets messaging and collaboration
platform, and application program inter-
faces (APIs), to create a chatbot solution
(‘Debbie’) that streamlined access to the
required information. By integrating this
new Deutsche Bank chatbot with the one
developed by the global custodian, manu-
al intervention into the query process was
removed and data from multiple systems
was combined into a single response.
In the former process, which can take
several minutes:
1. An asset manager calls their global cus-
todian to check their trade settlement
status for multiple trades in the Hong
Kong market to know if they have been
matched.
2. The global custodian calls Deutsche
Bank, its sub-custodian in the local
market, who checks its internal systems
and central depositary system for the
A full version of this article appeared in
Deutsche Bank’s Flow magazine
most up-to-date information.
3. D
eutsche Bank then responds with
the status, either over the phone or by
email, which contains a file that shows
the required information.
4. The global custodian then updates their
end client.
This process meant that the end client
had to wait for the response, depending
on the number of trades in the query.
In the current process, which takes a
matter of seconds:
1. The asset manager can ask their trade
settlement query within the Symphony
platform.
2. The global custodian’s chatbot rec-
ognises the query and automatically
triggers a request to Debbie for the
trade statuses.
3. D
ebbie checks the query with Deutsche
Bank and the Central Depository’s sys-
tems for the latest status information
and then passes this back to the global
custodian’s chatbot.
4. The global custodian chatbot combines
this information with other required
information and responds directly to
the end client.
This new process removes all manual
intervention and enables a response to the
end client query in a matter of seconds,
regardless of the number of trade queries.
As a result, the end client now receives