Featured capital markets case studiesSee how we're helping customers reduce costs and increase valueMicrosoft and our ecosystem of partners deliver solutions to help create connected customer experiences... strengthening profitable customer relationships with agile solutions. Here are some examples. View case studies for:  Accenture Accenture, in cooperation with Avanade and Microsoft, has implemented a solution for pension fund management. Using the development instruments included in the new Microsoft Visual Studio .NET suite, Accenture has produced high-performance software that reduces costs by managing the complex processes involved in pension fund administration and is offering it to other companies on a commercial basis  Allstate Insurance Co. The Allstate Corporation, the nation's largest publicly held personal lines insurer, serves more than 16 million households. As with most insurers, a crucial component of Allstate's financial results is derived from its holdings and investments. The Allstate Corporation relies heavily on Allstate Investments, LLC to manage its corporate investment portfolios and report pertinent data to its investment officers. Without a way to coordinate its resources, Allstate Investments was making investment decisions with immense capital exposure using information that often took days to obtain. With millions of dollars at stake in a fast-paced environment, having stale information was a critical problem in need of a superior solution. Allstate Investments deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which has reduced key information retrieval time from days to minutes.  Barclays CapitalBarclays Capital is one of the stellar success stories in investment banking of recent years. The firm's projected growth plan required the bank to review its existing fixed-income trading system to see how it could handle increasing trading volume. After close consultation with Microsoft Services, Barclays Capital decided to update its existing trade management system with a solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The new system is designed to process the increased volumes with a much more predictable latency. The trade and positioning system solution, which is based on SQL Server 2005, minimizes the latency between trade capture and risk updating.  BOVESPAStarting in the late 1970s, the Brazilian Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (BOVESPA) ran its mission-critical applications on ever larger, ever more costly mainframe platforms. By the early 2000s, with daily trading volume growing by 50 percent each year, BOVESPA IT executives decided to evaluate their technology investments and infrastructure. Seeking a more flexible approach, they decided to migrate the entire operation to a Microsoft-based environment using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Intel Itanium 2 and Xeon servers and ultimately retire the mainframe. Based on early results, the decision was a wise one. BOVESPA is enjoying higher performance, more stability and security, and a lower total cost of ownership. The institution is also helping brokers and dealers become more productive, thereby facilitating worldwide access to securities trading by individuals and organizations of all sizes.  Citi Citi, one of the world's premier financial institutions, has employees and customers in more than 100 countries. Citi's Global Transaction Services, which provides cash management services, wanted to help multinational clients better understand their cash positions, which span thousands of bank accounts around the world. Citi used the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to create TreasuryVision, a Web-based information and analytics service that treasury personnel use to gain a consolidated picture of overall cash positions and put controls around activities such as bank account management and foreign-exchange trades. Customers are able to invest funds more effectively, obtain a higher return on their operating cash, benefit from lower interest expenses, and better comply with global financial regulations and audit controls. CitiWhen 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 order execution at any point in time. After conducting "bake-off" competitive testing of 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.  Equinox A leading United Kingdom hedge fund is using a solution from Misys Eagleye and Microsoft for global compliance. The solution, which uses Microsoft .NET technology, is enabling fund managers to model investment decisions while the strategy is checked for breaches of local and global regulatory requirements. It also enables risk managers to ensure both pre- and post-trade compliance as they are alerted to breached trades in real time.  ITWorxWorking closely together, ITWorx and Execution developed X-Stream; a Software and Services solution based upon Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In the front office a Windows Smart Client provides sales traders and research analysts with a unique insight into their client relationships; delivering timely and relevant market data based upon previous interactions and known interests. For senior management, a Business Intelligence Portal provides a comprehensive way to visualize and better understand the commission, effort, and profitability of the entire business.  HSBCIn 2004, financial group HSBC launched an initiative to reduce the cost of supporting 300,000 desktop computers by 20 percent through rigorous standardization. To help achieve this goal, the company deployed Microsoft System Center solutions as an integral part of its new environment. Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 facilitates centralized software deployment, roaming user desktops, and the ability to track software usage to the individual user, while Operations Manager 2005 provides the granular monitoring capabilities needed to ensure that the globally distributed server computers supporting the new desktop environment remain up and running smoothly.  HCL TechnologiesDevelopers at India-based IT services company HCL Technologies have built two solutions using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The HCL team used Excel Services in Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 to develop X-Trade-a single, easy-to-configure trade processing platform that offers flexible deal capture and transaction management for derivatives and structured products. Financial services employees can manage strategies, create links between trades, provide global IDs, and manage processes. The HCL Team also developed a risk dashboard-an integrated, portfolio performance measurement and risk-management reporting system for portfolio and fund managers and their customers. Managers can use the dashboard to demonstrate recommendations and models to their clients.  HG CapitalEstablished in 1990, HgCapital is a private equity firm with offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. HgCapital aims to generate high, risk-adjusted returns for its investors by acquiring attractive business assets and working with management to generate incremental value. When its existing customer relationship management (CRM) system made it difficult to manage the firm's contact database, oversee key relationships, and track prospective deals efficiently, HgCapital implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Now, employees can monitor and analyze relationships with all their relevant business contacts and reduce time spent on administrative duties.  NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc.NASDAQ, which became the world's first electronic stock market in 1971 and remains the largest U.S. electronic stock market, is constantly looking for more efficient ways to serve its members. To retire its aging, large, mainframe computers, NASDAQ deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on two 4-node clusters to support its Market Data Dissemination System (MDDS). Every trade processed in the NASDAQ marketplace goes through the MDDS, with SQL Server 2005 handling some 5,000 transactions per second at market open. SQL Server 2005 simultaneously handles about 100,000 queries a day, using SQL Server 2005 Snapshot Isolation to support real-time queries against the data without slowing the database. NASDAQ is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership compared to the system replaced by the SQL Server 2005 deployment.  MarketWatch.comMarketWatch.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, helps more than five million unique visitors a month stay abreast of market conditions with its business and investing news, personal finance information, and analytical tools. The company was using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database, which had served it well, but needed a solution that would support more than 2 gigabytes of physical memory. It also wanted to enhance high availability. MarketWatch upgraded to SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), which supports up to 1 terabyte of RAM. The company is also evaluating SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring, which allows continuous streaming of the transaction log from a source server to a single destination server, providing complete database synchronization. The company develops its own applications using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework.  MillimanMilliman, 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 more than 150 serversto 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 JamesRaymond 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.  ReutersReuters Research uses more than 700 database instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, hosted on 150 computers running the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition operating system, to support customer access to the more than 10 terabytes of financial information in its flagship Reuters Knowledge service. Reuters Knowledge, a global information and analytics service for research and investment banking professionals, provides a centralized source of information, including fundamentals, earnings estimates, and financial reporting from industry analysts. Using SQL Server 2000 as a foundation for the Reuters Knowledge application has provided the company with efficient data replication used for populating a secondary data center, backup copies, and special-purpose clusters; high availability; easy administration using SQL Server Enterprise Manager; and an easy upgrade path.  RiskMetricsRiskMetrics 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.  Royal Bank of Scotland The IT team at RBS Global Banking and Markets had known for some time that it needed to improve the division's messaging environment. As part of the RDP, the bank has more than 80 live users of Exchange Server 2007 running on a resilient, dual-site setup using high-end storage equipment. The ability to run multiple antivirus applications simultaneously has given the group a significant increase in protection.  Security BenefitSecurity 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 it was challenging to integrate Lotus Notes 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.  Thomson Financial Over the past 20 years, portfolio managers at hundreds of firms have relied on the Thomson Financial PORTIA system to manage investment portfolios. However, as the pace of financial markets has accelerated, customers have begun to look for ways to automate process-intensive tasks. Thomson Financial responded by creating a new, graphical interface for its PORTIA software that allows users to customize their own navigation and workflows. Customers can automate common workflow steps to dramatically increase their efficiency, which also increases data accuracy by reducing human intervention.  TranelThe Tranel Financial Group needed an intuitive customer relationship management (CRM) solution that advisors could use to quickly capture, record, and access all client information. By delivering a full history of interactions within seconds, an effective CRM solution would not only increase customer satisfaction, but also serve as the basis for more accurate reporting. Microsoft Dynamics CRM offered Tranel a familiar, easy-to-use solution that users readily adopted. Since implementation, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has reduced the time financial advisors spend on administrative tasks, freeing them to provide better service to current clients and acquire new clients. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the Tranel Financial Group has realized benefits that include the ability to create customer reports in 60 to 80 percent less time and prepare for client review meetings in 50 to 75 percent less time.
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