Friday 27 January 2012

Case Study - Deposit exceptions

STADIUM is used at Allan Gray to identify and manage investment deposits made by their clients into Allan Gray bank accounts.

What is the deposit exceptions process?

When an Allan Gray client makes an investment, an investment instruction together with proof of payment is sent to Allan Gray. The Allan Gray back office staff process the investment and as part their compliance checks, then have to confirm that the investment amount stated has been received in Allan Gray's bank account.

The application provided in STADIUM allows users to match deposits. Users match deposits that are made into Allan Gray's bank accounts to a particular investor's transaction. The solution is called the 'Deposit Exceptions' process as it includes only deposits that could not be auto-reconciled by BankReconTwenty57's cash reconciliation product.

Allan Gray administrators typically know what deposits should be made based on investment applications that have been received. Users usually search for the deposit amount and ensure that the deposit is allocated to an investor.

This process will result in a deposit being allocated to a unit holder (or client) number. The deposit can then be reconciled by Finance during cash reconciliation using BankRecon.

Users: There are mainly three types of users who interact with the application:
  • Admin invest
  • Admin authorise
  • Finance group

Process flow

Deposit exceptions is a typical workflow process.

User in Admin Invest role will daily:
  • View Admin Invest screen to see list of transactions that have not been reconciled
  • Creates new service request on Siebel.  Siebel is Allan Gray's CRM system.
  • This service request would trigger a workflow in Siebel and it will get a unit holder number (UH number).  
  • Save service request number against corresponding transaction in STADIUM
  • Admin invest user then changes the status to indicate it needs to be reviewed by Admin authorise user.
User in Admin Authorise role will daily:
  • View Admin Authorise screen to see list of transactions that need authorisation
  • Unit holder number will be automatically updated by Siebel
  • User confirms all is in order, and changes status of transaction to indicate it is ready for recon
  • Transaction will be then be reconciled by BankRecon
User in Finance
  • Can perform all tasks typically carried out by Admin invest and Admin authorise users
  • Can also override statuses for transactions
  • Handle cases where the deposit cannot be identified and follow up with banks/investment company to get further information
In addition to this:
  • Audit records are maintained for each status change
  • Notes can be added by any user
Application size and scope
  • Total number of transactions: 250 000
  • Bank Accounts: 27
  • Active Users: 391
  • Average number of transactions per day: 160
  • Number of transactions processed on busiest day: 636
  • Number of STADIUM application pages: 42
About Allan Gray: Allan Gray is a South African investment management company. Allan Gray was a pioneer of performance related investment management fees and today the overwhelming majority of their clients’ assets are managed on this basis.