Our Experience

  • Our director has a myriad of communication experience. from Board level report to persuading entrenched silo departments to work together. 
  • Running a regular workshop between Investment operation and Investment Propositions to improve communication.
  • Explaining the difference knowledge base between developers and SME so that issues could be addressed and resolved SME providing structure and Developer implementing a fix after locating root cause.
  • Producing plans in different formats and levels of detail so that all parties in the meeting that were required for sign off were comfortable with the project plan.
  • challenging back on project requirement to ensure the correct requirements were recorded and duplication was avoided.
  • Writing formal meeting from board meeting for Non Exc Director.
  • Producing Data packs for investment committees to be able to make a yes/no decision for onboarding.
  • Mentoring in various forms, from best practice, career development and adoption of new tools and techniques.
  • Mentoring analyst in new ways of analysing and interpreting data as well as the use of Power BI, creating a new business culture around data and the tools available.
  • Helping to establish an agile culture within data analytics and exploring the question and there subsequent results rather than just answering the question and taking no further action.
  • Providing career advice on contracting, company set up, analysts path and project/agile methodology.
  • Providing training on systems usage and best practice 
  • Creating data visualisations for board reports, investment committees normally showing financial data or project reviews/assessments.
  • Creating dashboards linked to issue tracking log to provide SLA and KPI results monthly for use with external parties
  • Visualising cashflow differences for comparison of financial products, and market movements.
  • Manipulating data to produce visualisations in R, Power Bi, QlikView and Tableau:
    • In R largely producing graph like graphics using GGPlot2, creating vectors, Data sets and matrices using RStudio.
    • In Tableau using the data loader to merge and manipulate the data creating calculated fields and parameters to extract data that wasn’t clear (unit price * units sold to work out sales), conducting base line analysis, cohort analysis & level of detail calculation including filter for user control, so that I can create Visualisations, Dashboard and stories to create animations.
    • In Power BI much the same as Tableau but using Calculated columns and measures involving DAX coding knowing when to use Sum and SUMX (a simple example), linking data sets via models and using the data transformer to manipulate and cleanse the data, creating scenario analysis to visualise the changes caused by different dependent factors.
    • Creating user-friendly visualisation to represent sales patch targets, opportunities, and changes.
  • See examples under: Example Work –
  • Benchmarking internal portfolios for performance evaluation, allocating appropriate benchmarks for assets and portfolios depending on purpose and market.
  • Removing the FTSE benchmark and sourcing and creating benchmarks from a carefully selected and monitored set of funds to offer a replacement to the FTSE benchmark due to licensing restrictions.
  • Benchmarking assets against their competitor and market forces to evaluate their proposed onboarding.
  • Creating notional rates of exchange for clients to base hedging on from market movement over differing periods based on the client requirement.

 

  • Delivering a decreased solvency II deadline by a fifth attained by maintaining and updating the PRL and mapping of the SII & IFRS process’s as islocating weaknesses and opportunities before mapping as will be, conducting redesign. (including splitting reports out to allow multiple edits and increasing efficiency by 62%), plus undergoing a series of cross training session to enable a truly flexible team.
  • Conducting a root cause gap analysis on the integrity of 1.1 million data points, identifying which were incomplete, which were wrong and then conducting an analysis of the source of the issue and the data itself, to establish if data was missing or wrong from third party data or was it an internal issue. As multiple third parties were involved was one third party data set overwriting/blocking another’s. Followed by a data cleanse to improve integrity.
  • identifying possible external threats that could affect process improvements , Whilst accelerating the Solvency II workstream the Brexit project was started with a delivery date clashing with Solvency II, as part of the solvency II acceleration I conducted a risk assessment and review of the Brexit project to ensure projects did not put each other at risk of failure, working of closely with the alternate for the Brexit project.
  • Noticing a Data integrity check for reporting process could be a minimum of 10 times faster if 90% of the check’s were done at the attribute level as opposed to account level duplicating the breaks multiple times.
  • Redesigning and developing a look through report (look through was to 3 layers), so that the information was as of a set date rather than extracting information from fact sheets that could be 6 months + out of date. Collating internal source of data with external and third-party inputs for unit liked investment.
  • Creation of various financial models to calculate loan repayment schedule for fixed-term variable rate loans.
  • Stress tests derivative trades against customer profiles, affordability, changes in circumstances including a variety of interest scenarios.
  • Discounted Cash Flows models reviewing corporate accounts.
  • Building models and using data to derive the average performance, of markets and financial instrument over time, rolling average, scenario one vs scenario 2 etc.
  • Not as often used but calculating the Weighted Average Cost of Capital or the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
  • Undertake Gap analysis of the completeness and integrity of the Fund of Fund agreements. Match off an agreement to products and analysis gaps both in missing documentation and outdated documentation where product structures had changed this involved assessing 210 agreement covering 590 funds and identifying a GAP that could put at risk £285 M of assets under management.
  • Responsible for managing workflow (ensuring all relevant teams were working on their points and coordinating the response) following an initial compliance review of a new DFM (Discretionary Fund Manager).
  • Review of Data Governance for the new Platform Project. review and coordinate. Finance/Operation feedback and recommend amendments to legal documents and ensure technical accuracy.
  • Review of Process documentation for new pension switching account with the direct responsibility for checking operational accuracy of the processes and feeding back to relevant stakeholders.
  • Analysis credit risk on clients wishing to trade, could be as simple as checking the credit risk systems or could be working out what in the most efficient trade structure/structure combination to allow the customer to protect their risk as different trade types have different risk values and structures.
  • Writing risk proposals or relation ship manager to enable the introduction for a risk line for their clients.
  • Monitoring Project Risk, by identifying, logging, and monitoring both internal project risk and external factor such and putting in mitigation factors for example:
  • The risk: of not having specialist available on a given day due to illness as currently only one person was trained per key process.
  • The cause: staff being relocated, leaving, maternity or seconded to other projects.
  • The solution: undergo a cross training process so a minimum of two people could run each task and ideally three also remind management team these tasks need to part of any hand over training.
  • Or
  • The risk: multiple projects landing on the same time frame as my project causing extra work, loss of resources and system corruption.
  • The cause: multiple reasons form regulatory change, to system malfunction pushing several projects possibly into the same time frame.
  • Solution: engage the other project managers to discuss risk factor and get assurances that system conflict will not be an issue, engage department management to advise of the risk and if one particular project lands advise suggesting a no go decision be put forward. Acquire access to testing of one project to ensure the extra reports would be correct and not create more work. Gain additional trained resources to aid in one report if should it be needed.
  • Cost Analyst, Financial Analysis of onboarding of a complex fund’s and related business resulting in the onboarding of assets after negotiations with the FM to cover increases in costs due to operation specialism.
  • Analysing & assessing the onboarding of new funds /fund groups including acting as the gatekeeper for the Elevate platform. Cost benefit analysis, Due diligence, portfolio review, prospectus review all formed part of this process.
  • Cost-benefit analysis of derivative products, this could involve the comparison of multiple products on offer to the client to establish which one meets the client’s needs the best or establish which offered the best cost-saving/profit-taking option. This could also involve the review of the client accounts for stress testing to work out if the proposed level of protection would be suitable, and making recommendations to improve a client’s trading situation, such as a client who would benefit from a vanilla hedge but due to their tight profit margin could never afford a premium, so looking at boosted forward extra to improve the reliance on Forward Contracts.
  • Consulting Synergy’s Director also has experience in the following Platform areas
  • Project coordination for asset close out a project as a result of the termination of the new platform project (NWR) where many new assets had been created prior to the decision to terminate the project.
  • Review of Data Governance for the new Platform Project. review and coordinate. Finance/Operation feedback and recommend amendments to legal documents and ensure technical accuracy.
  • Retail Distribution Review conversion project,  lead data analyst and part of the lead project team for transferring £1bn worth of assets (52% of all holding under management), from dirty share classes (Commission based) to clean (non-commission based).
  • Data integrity check (between platform web “customer-facing”  & trading systems) Plane & Implement documentation so that process could be followed and standard maintained after departure.
  • Cost Analysis of onboarding of a complex fund’s which did not meet the normal straight-through processing criteria and related business that would be brought in because of onboarding. The result was the eventual onboarding of assets but only after negotiations with the adviser who had a substantially reduced fee with the platform, and an increase in their fee to the platform to cover the increases in costs due to operation specialism.
  • Review and recommendation of the onboarding of esoteric funds, including suitability, finance tracking and governance.
  • Removing the FTSE benchmark and sourcing an alternative source that would match/track the FTSE using a balance of funds.