Capital Markets: Customer Stories

When Citi’s Lava Technology team needed to create a compliance solution for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation NMS (requiring dealers to use best-available pricing when executing securities orders), it thought it would need a Cray supercomputer or other specialized solution. This is because terabytes of data are required to recreate market conditions at the point of an order execution at any point in time. After doing a “bake-off” competitive testing with other solutions, the company, which provides a suite of products to support real-time feeds across multiple equity markets, determined that the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005, provided the best performance and lowest total cost of ownership. The solution supports peak loads that exceed 200,000 messages per second.

Among stock exchanges, low latency—the speed at which a stock trade can be processed—is supreme. Direct Edge wanted to reduce the already low latency of its system, while supporting vastly larger trading volumes. It accomplished those goals and more by rejecting Linux or UNIX choices, instead building its new exchange on technology from Microsoft and Informatica. Since deploying Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Informatica Ultra Messaging, Direct Edge has reduced latency by 83 percent, to just 340 microseconds, enabling a 580 percent increase in throughput, and it envisions further cuts in latency. Uptime is 100 percent to date. Since implementation, the company’s market share has increased based in part on its choice of platform. A 50 percent reduction in time to market meant a savings of U.S.$14 million in reduced operational costs. And a 25 percent smaller hardware footprint saved another $1 million.

Financial services organisations need to support the rapidly evolving structured products they offer their clients, however, the solutions available can’t always keep pace with the demands of the business. Employees working in the risk and trade management market have to contend with resource-intensive, monolithic systems, and frequently resort to using spreadsheets for products that don’t fit with existing trading applications.

Milliman, a global financial consulting firm, needed to expand the use of its highly successful variable annuity hedging model. The company deployed Windows Server® 2003 Compute Cluster Edition on 150 servers—expected to grow to 250 by the end of 2008—to reduce operating system licensing costs, retain the reliable Windows® platform, and avoid the technical risk associated with a move to a Linux-based environment.

Raymond James provides a range of investment services through a network of more than 5,000 financial advisors operating in 2,200 locations around the world. To help these advisors continue to make fast, accurate, and cost-effective decisions, Raymond James created a suite of business intelligence (BI) tools that advisors use to analyze vast stores of product, client, and market data. The company’s BI platform is based on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 data management software and SQL Server 2008 Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. Today, 6,600 people use the Raymond James Reports Center to help make cost-effective decisions. By using software that Raymond James already owns, the firm will save U.S.$500,000 every three years in licensing efficiencies and will also eliminate additional training costs.

RiskMetrics Group’s Risk Management Business delivers risk management services to the world’s leading asset managers, banks, and institutions to help them measure and model complex financial instruments. To meet increasing market demand for risk analysis, RiskMetrics needed to accommodate increasing peak loads on its computing infrastructure for specific periods of time. The company used the Windows Azure™ platform —an Internet-scale services platform hosted in Microsoft® data centers—to provide on-demand computing capacity for its analytics applications. Now RiskMetrics can complement its on-premises capabilities with a flexible, reliable solution that can support bursts in computing activity over short periods of time, deliver enhanced services for more custoRiskMetrics Group’s Risk Management Business delivers risk management services to the world’s leading asset managers, banks, and institutions to help them measure and model complex financial instruments. To meet increasing market demand for risk analysis, RiskMetrics needed to accommodate increasing peak loads on its computing infrastructure for specific periods of time. The company used the Windows Azure™ platform —an Internet-scale services platform hosted in Microsoft® data centers—to provide on-demand computing capacity for its analytics applications. Now RiskMetrics can complement its on-premises capabilities with a flexible, reliable solution that can support bursts in computing activity over short periods of time, deliver enhanced services for more customers, empower innovation, and provide the company with increased business agility.mers, empower innovation, and provide the company with increased business agility.

Financial advisors at SEB Wealth Management, a division of SEB, one of Sweden’s premier banks, demand in-depth knowledge about their high-worth customers to provide the very best service. The company is replacing its homegrown customer relationship management (CRM) system with one built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. SEB Wealth Management was able to complete the first phase of the rollout in just five months and create an engaging, easy-to-use interface by using Microsoft Silverlight. With the new system, SEB financial advisors have a better view of their customers’ portfolios and lives so that they can serve them better. With the development efficiencies provided by Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft development tools, the CRM team has sped up the rollout of new features by 50 percent and now spends 75 percent of its CRM budget on development and only 25 percent on maintenance.

Security Benefit is a growing financial services company with more than 790 employees. Headquartered in Topeka, Kansas, the company’s outside sales team operates from remote locations nationwide. For years, the company used an internally developed contact management application based in Lotus Notes to support its remote sales force. But because Lotus Notes was difficult to integrate with the company’s other systems, sales staff in the field had difficulty staying connected to the most relevant business data. Security Benefit needed a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that would provide its remote sales force with access to real-time information. In July 2007, the company implemented Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0. Now, Security Benefit gains from increased agility, new sales opportunities, and reduced IT costs.

In response to the dramatic increase in high net-worth clients, wealth management firms are facing new client demands and competitive challenges. To deliver personalized services and advice, capitalize on new opportunities, and facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements, firms are looking for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that can help them manage complex client relationships in concert with business processes. For many firms focused on wealth management, Microsoft Dynamics® CRM is an increasingly popular choice. Firms of all sizes, from small new banks to established global enterprises, use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to gain a 360-degree view of clients; flexible marketing, sales, and customer services tools that can meet industry-specific needs; and easy integration with existing banking applications.

Like many financial institutions during the global economic crisis, Warren Wicklund—a leading asset management firm in Norway—is under pressure to meet new market regulations. To comply with MiFID regulations, the organisation deployed a solution from Columbus IT based on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. This technology ensures that financial advisors comply with complex guidelines while freeing them up to focus on customer service and new business.