The non-compliant use of messaging platforms has led to billions in regulatory fines. Symphony helps enable seamless compliant messaging with clients via WhatsApp, WeChat and SMS
Enable surveillance and recordkeeping of clients’ preferred messaging platforms
Enable maintenance of SMS communication records for regulatory compliance
The only fully open, scalable, and secure collaboration platform purpose-built for global markets – enabling efficient workflows and compliant communication
Suite of modular collaboration capabilities accelerates communication
Leverage Symphony’s capabilities in your platforms and portals
Secure, compliance-enabling framework meets the stringent needs of markets
Compliance-enabling and scalable voice technology maximizes efficiency by defragmenting communication and connecting traders and trader-adjacent teams instantly
Eliminate communication silos and provide instant voice connectivity
Cross-organizational solution native to Symphony and built for speed
Trader-adjacent connectivity with global intercom across internal teams
Full-featured turret replacement with maximum external connectivity
Facilitate productivity, collaboration and effective co-working with leading video conferencing platforms integrated alongside Symphony chats and rooms
Keep collaborating in Symphony while joining or hosting Zoom meetings
Retain Symphony workflow context during Teams Video meetings
Connect your everyday systems to Symphony to improve efficiency, reduce context switching and mitigate manual tasks
Enterprise software bi-directionally integrated with Symphony
415+ apps and 2K+ bots to help streamline and automate workflows
What happened over the past few weeks was what I term a “magma moment” in the financial markets. Reddit. WallStreetBets. GameStop. And more. Something molten and disruptive erupted and will change the landscape of the financial markets as it now turns igneous. The market volatility and agility were on full display. But the financial operations teams in the middle and back office were the ones who truly felt the heat and pain. More accounts to onboard, more transactions needing to ensure settlement. It all meant longer hours, more pressure and duress added to existing stresses. Exacerbated by disconnected and tedious manual processes in both client lifecycle and transaction lifecycle management. We just saw market fundamentals disrupted in real-time. But…there is a parallel (and more positive) disruption required to transform client onboarding and post transaction processes. It needs to happen. And soon. Think: augmented operations. Human-centric collaboration technology, automated workflows that dramatically reduce (someday even eliminate) the email/phone/fax productivity death loop.
Let’s take client onboarding as an example. What is a day in the life of a client onboarding team? Many of you know it well, but to summarize:
Sometimes by asking good questions, we can start to visualize what change looks like. If we dissect the typical ops day, we ask:
Ops teams need their own version of a magma moment. In the world of Symphony’s customers, we see augmented operations, using human-centered collaboration technology and automated workflows that reduce the email/phone/fax productivity death loop. Connection is important but context is essential.
Let’s imagine a slightly different day. This is a very generic example utilizing Symphony’s collaboration platform (currently used by over half a million financial services professionals globally), but you can extrapolate similar risk reductions and efficiencies across many different flows. For example:
8am: Use Symphony to Instantly reach APAC team, confirm they already have new client ownership data, eliminating need to reach client during major market volatility
9am: Eliminate 60 typical emails and cc’s by creating 1 Symphony Room
10am: Escalate suspicious PEP profile to compliance via VIP Symphony room
10:30am Have time for real coffee break
11am: Reduce context switching 25% by pushing data into Salesforce and alerting sales of progress directly via Symphony (Symphony offers strong integration with Salesforce)
Noon: Have time for a real lunch break
1 pm: Connect with Outsourced Onboarding team externally via secure collaboration, adhering to all compliance policies, 1 hour conference call becomes 12 minute meeting + chat
2 pm: Flow data into CLM tool automatically via Symphony bot, saving 90 mins
3 pm: Use Lexis-Nexis via Symphony, reducing context switching by 20%
4 pm: Confirm multiple new clients onboarded.
4:30pm: Send transparency report to management via Symphony room and @mention key managers
5pm Leave on time for Yoga class
That future is here and it’s possible today. It’s time for the Ops Magma moment. How do you apply human-centered digitization to augment your efforts? How do you gain real-time context and collaboration? How do you reduce context switching while also increasing the ability to connect with counterparts? All magma moments create leaders and laggards. What better way to increase your ability to compete than by streamlining some of the most inefficient processes in the middle and back office?
More than ever before, business success depends upon an organization’s ability to communicate quickly and effectively. It’s clear that the “workplace” has radically changed. This new landscape demands three things from every company’s communication tools:
In December of 2021, SIFMA, ICI and DTCC called for the shortening of the settlement cycle in the U.S. financial markets from T+2 (transaction date plus two days) to T+1 (transaction date plus one day) within the first half of 2024. Their report indicates that accelerating the settlement process will “reduce risks and costs for the industry while building upon the benefits achieved in the successful move to T+2 in 2017.” This is in line with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement on Feb 9, 2022 of a proposed rule to shorten the standard settlement cycle for most broker-dealer transactions from two business days after the trade date (“T+2″) to one business day after the trade date (“T+1″), while soliciting comments regarding challenges and possible approaches to achieving settlement by the end of trade date (“T+0″).
In our journey building an event mesh, we face the challenge of reconciling with Symphony’s engineering history. Specifically, we are transitioning from a single-tenant, monolithic architecture to a multi-tenant, microservice architecture. And critically, due to the nature of our business, this shift must be both progressive and smooth.
