Case Study

Transforming for the future: global wealth manager updates tech platform

Firm transforms technology stack to meet challenge posed by FinTechs and future-proofing technology, appealing to next generation of investors

The better the question

Can a revitalized brokerage platform win over next gen customers?

Global wealth manager modernizes its brokerage platform to reclaim its competitive edge from FinTechs.

1

Mobile technology has transformed the retail brokerage ecosystem.  Leveraging smartphones to invest in the market is a growing trend, that picked up significantly during the COVID-19 lockdowns and shows no signs of abating. Key to this development: significant numbers of young investors from the millennial and Gen Z cohorts routinely follow the latest market trends and developments, trading shares over their mobile phones.

When one large US wealth and asset manager found itself struggling to keep pace with a rapidly trending stock meme, the firm recognized that its technology needed an overhaul to retain market share and remain relevant for the next generation of investors. For example, many new mobile trading applications enable traders to buy fractional shares and to move money between accounts with ease. This firm could meet these demands, but not without hiring significant numbers of people in the back office and working 24/7 to keep up with volume.

To remedy this situation, the firm turned to Ernst & Young LLP (EY) to help it modernize its brokerage platform, and to streamline operations to more effectively enable and support data-driven decisions. Ultimately, the goal was to provide the business the ability to offer more innovative features to its customers, along with a superior experience, and help it seize a competitive edge.

To achieve an ambitious digital transformation, the firm set out to optimize business processes by:

  • Designing a dynamic, future-ready platform that would align with the business strategy and adapt to incorporate future innovations and disruptions
  • Adopting a “business-led, tech-enabled” mindset where business capabilities are at the center and the experience, operational processes and architecture are all driven by the domain underpinning the business capability
  • Creating a platform that incorporated essential digital transformation elements, including cloud enablement, microservices architecture and an application programming interface (API) centric design
  • Reforming talent and workforce strategies and refining performance measurement through key performance indicators transformation
  • Following this up with an actionable plan that helped to establish a clear, phased approach to transition to the target state architecture over time

The EY team guided the client’s digital transformation and platform modernization initiatives, relying on a tested methodology and comprehensive approach that aligned business and technology strategies; strengthened change management efforts; and set the stage for a forward-thinking, adaptable platform that would meet customer needs and also help attract top talent.


The better the answer

Flexible, future-focused approach drove operational efficiency

Next-generation capabilities positioned firm at forefront of digitized financial landscape.

2

Working closely with the client team, EY helped the firm focus on four key areas in its digital transformation:

  • Develop a “future-proof” brokerage platform that aligned with customer expectations and provided industry-leading modern digital experiences.
  • Upgrade the technology infrastructure to transition from a legacy mainframe setup to a contemporary, cloud-enabled infrastructure with an API ecosystem.
  • Create an architecture blueprint for the brokerage platform that embodied the key principles of efficiency, quality, flexibility and performance, in a sense serving as the “north star” guide.
  • Deploy an agile-based model to accelerate the speed of change delivery, helping the firm manage change and talent more effectively.

A key part of this effort was to modernize the technology stack to replace legacy software. Not only would this eliminate key-person dependencies as well as the need to hire and retain expensive legacy technology architects and engineers, a new, cloud-based architecture would also be attractive to new talent hires.

In addition, the team also focused on delivering a platform that would:

  • Detail customer journeys to drive the definition of platform requirements so that development is consistently customer focused.
  • Define a business capability model to anchor platform development that would facilitate the entire brokerage lifecycle.
  • Outline target state process recommendations to include industry insights across the entire brokerage ecosystem (namely more than 20 capabilities).
  • Leverage industry insights and perspectives to drive consensus regarding target state process recommendations to eliminate non-value-added processing steps, remove manual processing and reduce handling time.
  • Conduct design thinking workshops to encourage “blue sky” thinking methodology to drive functional and solution architecture design.
  • As a final step, the team members built, tested and deployed key brokerage capabilities end to end for the entire system. In addition, they also took the necessary steps to maintain regulatory compliance, achieve cost efficiency and enhance security protocols, while also fostering business resilience and sustainable growth.

The better the world works

Business-driven model placed customer experience at the center

Aligning project with customer needs helped firm quickly deploy platform that would be fit for purpose.

3

When the project was completed, the client had developed leading-edge capabilities in the brokerage space that had previously been limited by its legacy platform. Brokerage clients could now open an account, execute trades and monitor real-time updates on the value of their portfolio, all within a mobile cloud-based app that provided leading edge customer experience.

By aligning the business-led transformation with the needs of the client, the EY methodology helped to keep the project on track to deliver results that would have a substantial impact and add significant value for the client.

The platform also provided tremendous flexibility, which meant the client could respond quickly and nimbly to its customer demands as well as meet new business and regulatory needs in a more efficient manner.

This was a critical step in meeting the demands of clients, especially younger clients. The 2023 EY Global Wealth Research Report found that millennial investors are more than twice as likely to switch to a new financial provider than boomers if they believe the company offers a better product or service more attuned to their needs. They are also more likely to shift a larger slice of their assets. That’s why it was absolutely essential that EY built a “future-proof” platform that would deliver leading-edge capabilities for years to come.


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