Connected Data: The Opportunity for Collateral and Liquidity Optimization

The function and definition of collateral and liquidity optimization has continued to expand from its roots in the early 2000s. Practitioners must now consider the application of connected data on security holders to operationalize the next level of efficiency in balance sheet management. A guest post from Transcend.

The concept of connected data, or metadata, in financial markets can sound like a new age philosophy, but really refers to the description of security holdings and agreements that together deliver an understanding of what collateral must be received and delivered, where it originated and how it must be considered on the balance sheet. This information is not available from simply observing the quantity and price of the security in a portfolio. Rather, connected data is an important wrapper for information that is too complex to show in a simple spreadsheet.

Earlier days of optimization meant ordering best to deliver collateral in a list, or creating algorithms based on Credit Support Annexes and collateral schedules. These were effective tools in their day and were appropriate for the level of balance sheet expertise and technology at hand; some were in fact quite advanced. These techniques enabled banks and buy-side firms to take advantage of best pricing in the marketplace for collateral assets that could be lent to internal or external counterparties. Many of these techniques are still in use today. While they deliver on what they were designed for, they are fast becoming outmoded. Consequently, firms relying on these methodologies struggle to drive further increases in balance sheet efficiency, and in order to maintain financial performance targets may need to charge higher prices. This is not a sustainable strategy.

The next level of collateral optimization considers connected data in collateral calculations. Interest is being driven by better technology that can more precisely track financial performance in real time. A finely tuned understanding of the nature of the individual positions and how they impact the firm can in turn mandate a new kind of collateral optimization methodology that structures cheapest to deliver based on a combination of performance impacting factors and market pricing. This gives a new meaning to “best collateral” for any given margin requirement. This only becomes possible when connected data is integrated into the collateral optimization platform.

As an example of applying connected data, not all equities are the same on a balance sheet. A client position that must be funded has one implication while a firm position has another. Both bring a funding and liquidity cost. A firm long delivered against a customer short is internalization, which has a specific balance sheet impact. Depending on balance sheet liquidity, this impact may need additional capital to maintain. Likewise, an expected tenor of a position will impact liquidity treatments. A decision to retain or host these different assets as collateral can in turn feedback to Liquidity Coverage Ratio, Leverage Ratio and other metrics for internal and external consumption.

If these impacts can be observed in real-time, the firm may find that internalizing the position reduces balance sheet but is sub-optimal compared to borrowing the collateral externally. This of course carries its own funding and capital charges, along with counterparty credit limits and risk weightings in the bilateral market. These could in turn be balanced by repo-ing out the firm position, and by tenor matching collateral liabilities in line with the Liquidity Coverage Ratio and future Net Stable Funding Ratio requirements. Anyone familiar with balance sheet calculations will see that these overlapping and potentially conflicting objectives may result in decisions that increase or decrease costs depending on the outcome. By understanding the connected data of each position, including available assets and what needs to be funded, firms can make the best possible decision in collateral utilization. Importantly, the end result is to reduce slippage, increase efficiency, and ultimately deliver greater revenues and better client pricing based on smarter balance sheet management.

Another way to look at the new view of collateral optimization is as the second derivative. The first derivative was the ordering of lists or observation of collateral schedules. The next generation incorporates connected data across collateral holdings and requirements for a more granular understanding of what collateral needs to be delivered and where, and how this will impact the balance sheet and funding costs. It has taken some time to build the technology and an internal perspective, but firms are now ready to engage in this next level of collateral sophistication.

Implementing technology for connected data in collateral and liquidity

A connected data framework starts with assessing what data is available and what needs to be tagged for informing the next level of information about collateral holdings. This process is achievable only with a scalable technology solution: it is not possible to manage this level of information manually let alone for real time decision making. Building out a technology platform requires careful consideration of the end to end use case. If firms get this part right, they can succeed in building out a connected data ecosystem.

The connected data project also requires access to a wide range of data sources. Advances in technology have allowed data to be captured and presented to traders, regulators, and credit and operations teams. But right now, most data are fragmented, looking more like spaghetti than a coherent picture of activity across the organization. To be effective, data needs to flow from the original sources and be readable by each system in a fully automated way.

Once a usable, tagged data set has been established, it can then be applied to collateral optimization and actionable results. This can include what-if scenarios, algorithmic trading, workflow management, and further to areas like transfer pricing analytics. Assessing and organizing the data, then tagging it appropriately, can yield broad-ranging results.

Building out the collateral mindset

An evolution in the practice of collateral optimization requires a more holistic view of what collateral is supposed to do for the firm and how to get there. This is a complex cultural challenge and is part of an ongoing evolution in capital markets about the role of the firm, digitization and how services are delivered. While difficult to track, market participants can qualitatively point to differences in how they and their peers think about collateral today versus five years ago. The further the past distance, the greater the change, which naturally suggests challenges when looking at a possible future state.

An important element to developing scalable collateral thinking is the application of technology; our observation is that technology and thinking about how the technology can be applied go hand-in-hand. As each new wave of technology is introduced, new possibilities emerge to think about balance sheet efficiency and also how services are delivered both internally and to clients. In solving these challenges for our clients using our technology, it is evident that a new vision is required before a technology roadmap can be designed or implemented.

The application of connected data for the collateral market is one such point of evolution. Before connected data were available on a digitized basis, collateral desks relied either on ordered lists or individual/manual understandings of which positions were available for which purposes. There was no conversation about the balance sheet except in general terms. Now however, standardized connected data means that every trading desk, operations team and balance sheet decision maker can refine options for what collateral to deliver based on the best balance sheet outcome in near real-time. New scenarios can be run that were never possible, and pricing for clients can be obtained in time spans that used to take hours if not a day or more.

Now that collateral optimization based on connected data is available, this requires firms to think about what services they can deliver to clients on an automated basis, and what should be bundled and what should be kept disaggregated. As new competitors loom in both the retail and institutional space, these sorts of conversations driven by technology and collateral become critical to the future of the business. Connected data is leading the way.

This article was originally published on Securities Finance Monitor.

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Top five trends in collateral management for 2018

Collateral management has broadened far past simple margin processing; collateral now impacts a majority of financial market activity from determining critical capital calculations to impacting customer experience to driving strategic investment decisions. In this article, we identify the top five trends in collateral management for 2018 and highlight important areas to watch going forward.

The holistic theme driving forward collateral management is its central role in financial markets. Collateral has grown so broad as to make even its name confusing: where collateral can refer to a specific asset, the implications of collateral today can reach through reporting, risk, liquidity, pricing, infrastructure and relationship management. The opportunities for collateral professionals have likewise expanded, and non-collateral roles must now have an understanding of collateral to deliver their core obligations to internal and external clients.

We see a common theme running through five areas to watch in collateral management in the coming year: the application of smarter data and intelligence to drive core business objectives. Many firms have digested the basics of collateral optimization and are now ready to incorporate a broader set of parameters and even a new definition of what optimization means. Likewise, technology investments in collateral are starting to tie into broader innovation projects at larger firms; this will unlock new value-added opportunities for both internal and external facing technology applications.

Here are our top five trends for collateral management in 2018:

#5 Technology Investments

The investment cycle in collateral-related technology applications continues to grow at a rapid pace. Collateral management budget discussions are moving from the back office to the top of the house. And partly as a result, the definition of the category is also changing. Collateral management should no longer be seen as strictly the actions of moving margin for specified products, but rather is part of a complex ecosystem of collateral, liquidity, balance sheet management and analytics. The usual, first order investment targets of these budgets are internally focused, including better reporting, inventory management and data aggregation. The second derivative benefit of a more robust data infrastructure focuses on externally facing trading applications, including tools for traders and client intelligence utilities that provide real-time information and pricing for the benefit of all parties. This new category does not yet have a simple name, one could think of it as a “recommendation system” but regardless of name, this has become a major driver of forward-looking bank technology efforts and efficiency drives.

As large financial services firms capture the benefits of their current round of investments, they will increasingly turn towards integrating core innovations in artificial intelligence, Robotics Process Automation and other existing technologies into their collateral-related investments. This will unlock a large new wave of opportunity for how business is conducted and what information can be captured, analyzed, then automated, for a range of client facing, business line, internal management and reporting applications.

#4 Regulatory reporting

Despite being 10 years since the bottom of the great recession, regulatory reporting requirements for banks and asset managers continue to evolve. Largely irrespective of jurisdiction, the core problem facing these firms is aggregating and linking data together for reporting automation. Due to strict timeframes and complex requirements, firms historically relied on a pre-existing mosaic of technology and human resources to satisfy regulatory reporting needs. However, these tactical solutions made scale, efficiency and responsiveness to new rules difficult. The challenge of regulatory reporting is a puzzle that, once solved, appears obvious. But the process of solving the puzzle can create substantial challenges.

Looking at one regulation alone misses the transformative opportunity of strategic data management across the organization. Whether it is SFTR, MiFID II, Recovery & Resolution Planning requirements of SR-14/17 or Qualified Financial Contracts (QFCs), the latest initiative du jour should be a kick off for a broader rethink about data utilization. Wherever a firm starts, the end result must be a robust data infrastructure that can aggregate and link information at the most granular level. At a high level, firms will need to develop the capability to link all positions and trading data with agreements that govern these positions, collateral that is posted on the agreements, any guarantees that may be applied and any other constraints that need to be considered. Additionally, it has to be able to format and produce the needed information on demand. Achieving this goal will take meaningful work but will make organizations not only more efficient but also more future proof.

#3 Transfer pricing

As firms try to optimize collateral across the enterprise, it is critical that they develop reasonably sophisticated transfer pricing mechanisms to ensure appropriate cost allocations as well as sufficient transparency to promote best incentives in the organization. Many sell-side firms have highly granular models with visibility into secured and unsecured funding, XVA, balance sheet and capital costs. And in varying fashion these firms allocate some or all of these costs internally. But many challenges remain, including: how should all these costs be directly charged to the trader or desk doing the trade; and what is the right balance of allocating actual costs versus incentivizing business behavior that maximally benefits the client franchise overall. As we know, client business profiles change through time as do funding and capital constraints. There may be a conscious decision to do some business that may not make money in support of other areas that are highly profitable. Transfer pricing is evolving from a bespoke, business aligned process to a dynamic, enterprise tool. The effort to enhance transfer pricing business models continues to be refined and expanded.

Firms that embrace the next iteration of transfer pricing will achieve a more scalable, efficient and responsive balance sheet. This will include capturing both secured and unsecured funding costs, plus firm-wide and business specific liquidity and capital costs. Accurately identifying the range of costs can properly incentivize business behaviors beyond simply the cost of an asset in the collateral market. Ultimately, transfer pricing can be a tool to drive strategic balance sheet management objectives across the firm.

Functionally, implementing transfer pricing requires access to substantial data on existing balance sheet costs, inventory management and liquidity costs that firms must consider. Much like collateral optimization, the building block of a robust transfer pricing methodology is data. Accurate information on transfer pricing can then flow back into trading and business decisions to be truly effective.

#2 Collateral control and optimization

Optimization is evolving well beyond an operations driven process of finding opportunity within a business to an enterprise wide approach at pre-trade, trade and post-trade levels. Pre-trade, “what-if” analyses that will inform a trader if a proposed transaction is cost accretive or reducing to the franchise is important, but this requires an analytics tool that can comprehend the impact to the firm’s economic ecosystem. At the point of trade, identifying demands and sources of collateral across the entire enterprise extends to knowing where inventories are across business lines, margin centers, legal entities and regions. It also means understanding the operational nuances and legal constraints governing those demands across global tri-parties, CCPs, derivative margin centers and securities finance requirements.

In a simple example, collateral posted on one day may not be the best to post a week later; if posted collateral becomes scarce in the securities financing market and can be profitably lent out, it may be unwise to provide it as margin. A holistic post-trade analysis, complete with updated repo or securities lending spreads, can tell a trader about missed opportunities, leading to a new form of Transaction Cost Analytics for collateralized trading markets.

#1 Integration of derivatives & securities finance (fixed income and equities)

The need for taking a holistic approach to collateral management has led the industry toward significant business model changes. Collateral is common currency across an enterprise and must be properly allocated to wherever it can be used most efficiently. This means that traditional silos – repo, securities lending, OTC derivatives, exchange traded derivatives, treasury and other areas – need to be integrated. Operations groups that have been doing fundamentally the same thing can no longer be isolated from one another; the cost savings that come from process automation and avoiding operational duplication is too compelling.

On the front-office side, changes needed to impact trading behavior, culture and reporting to name a few are often very difficult to implement over a short period of time. Despite similar flows and economic guidelines, different markets and operation centers, even though all under the same roof, traditionally suffer from asymmetric information. To address this challenge a handful of large sell-side players have combined some aspects of these businesses under the “collateral” banner, sometimes along with custody or other related processing business. Others have developed an enterprise solution to inventory and collateral management. We expect that, more and more, management is seeing the common threads and shared risks involved. The merger of business and operations teams translates into a need for technology that can be leveraged across silos.

The business of collateral management is reshaping every process and silo it touches. While the trends we have identified are not brand new, they all stand out for how far and fast they are advancing in 2018 and beyond. Financial services firms that take advantage of these trends concurrently and plan for a future where collateral is integrated across all areas of the business will improve their competitive positioning going forward. To add a sixth trend: firms that ignore broader thinking about collateral management technology do so at their own peril.

This article was originally published on Securities Finance Monitor.

Optimizing Your Collateral Resiliency and Recovery

Balancing collateral optimization and regulatory compliance front to back through “Holistic Collateral Architecture”

July 28, 2017 

Collateral Business Transformation

Financial institutions today are increasingly evaluating how best to manage their collateral needs in the face of dual challenges – how to adapt their business and operational structures to become more efficient and how to respond to and comply with ongoing demands around changing regulatory requirements. These issues resemble a seemingly difficult task, like transferring passengers from one train to another, while both trains are in motion. Firms that approach front office transformation challenges, decoupled from regulatory and compliance challenge, will miss opportunities to solve larger systemic issues in a strategic and integrated fashion. We strongly believe that Technology strategy and architecture can play a critical role as firms evolve to meet these challenges. This article looks at how businesses can strategically address their collateral and liquidity management operations and regulatory needs by adopting a more holistic integration approach that takes into account their organizational complexity, unique business requirements and their compliance mandates. Firms that get this strategy right will establish a competitive advantage and maximize limited budgets by significantly enhancing their front office capabilities, while also meeting regulatory requirements.

Managing Business Transformations and Regulatory Challenges Simultaneously

Global regulations such as Dodd-Frank, Basel, MIFID and EMIR are demanding significant changes to securities finance and derivatives businesses which are primary drivers of collateral flow. An organization’s overall portfolio mix dictates the cost of doing business, and having an integrated view of the complete liquidity situation is critical and can’t be done in isolation. These regulatory and economic forces are driving firms to integrate their collateral businesses that traditionally operated as silos.

At the same time, new global regulations are mandating that firms implement specific capabilities and requirements that are often quite broad, impacting many aspects of collateral and liquidity management capabilities. Consequently, these requirements are quite onerous to accomplish especially because they need to be implemented at an enterprise level.

What is Required for Front Office Optimization?

Typically, financial business units were structured and incentivized to take a highly localized approach to addressing the collateral requirements for their specific business lines. This historical constraint was driven by a need for domain expertise and reinforced by budgeting protocols and performance expectations that were more closely aligned with local returns on capital, revenue and income. In the current environment, making decisions within a single function misses the opportunity to achieve broader benefits to drive valuable optimization across an enterprise. The outlying boxes in the diagram below illustrate the standard, localized organizations that exist in most firms today, where individual business units make collateral decisions without consideration of their sister business’ needs.

Firms that move beyond the silo approach and evaluate and prioritize collateral and liquidity requirements in a more integrated fashion across all their collateral management processes are better positioned to ensure the optimal allocation of capital and costs, realize efficiency gains and enhanced profitability. Some organizations are doing this by establishing collateral optimization units that have a mandate to implement technology and organizational changes across multiple businesses on a front-to-back basis. Potential areas that organizations are evaluating include maximizing stress liquidity, streamlining operational processing, reducing the balance sheet by retaining high-quality HQLA and improving the firm’s funding profile by reducing liquidity buffers against bad trades for non-LCR compliant transactions.

What is Required for Regulatory Compliance?

While many front office businesses typically focus on creating optimal technology architecture to improve financial return metrics, there are specific regulatory-focused technology enhancements that additionally need to be implemented. In most cases, these regulatory requirements are implemented by compliance and/or operations areas potentially away from the front office functions. This is a big challenge as these requirements are at the firm level and most firms don’t have a coordinated collateral architecture in the front. In particular, Recovery and Resolution Planning (RRP) requirements, Qualified Financial Contracts (QFC) specifications, Secured Financing Transaction Reporting (SFTR) are few examples that have pressing requirements and deadlines in the near future.

These regulations are creating significant demands on large institutions’ business and technology architecture:

  • Track and report on firm and counterparty collateral by jurisdiction (RRP – SR 14-1)
  • Track sources and uses of collateral at a security level across legal entities (RRP – 2017 guidance)
  • Conduct scenario-planning to simulate market stresses, such as a ratings downgrade or other environmental changes, that estimate impact on collateral and liquidity position in stress scenarios on a periodic basis (RRP – SR 14-1 and 2017 guidance)
  • Deliver daily information on their collateral and liquidity positions. Specific QFC (Qualified Financial Contract) reports will cover position-level, counterparty-level exposures, legal agreements and detailed collateral information. (QFC Specifications)
  • Report on all Securities Financing transactions (SFTR – Europe)

To fully meet these compliance deadlines within the next 12 to 24 months, most firms do not have the luxury of adopting a strategic approach to re-engineer their business and technology architecture and have been forced to take tactical steps to ensure compliance.  However, it is likely that achieving compliance in a short timeframe will create huge business and operational overhead costs, as one-off solutions may not be tightly integrated and may require additional manual work and reconciliations over time. The ongoing need for changes to front office business processes will have an impact on compliance solutions – potentially causing firms to significantly increase the operational overhead of supporting these businesses.

This can lead to a rather unfortunate outcome, in that costs for collateral businesses can significantly increase, despite working hard to drive cost & capital efficiencies.

A BETTER APPROACH – HOLISTIC ARCHITECTURE

Firms that choose to tackle these operational and regulatory challenges head-on and invest to create and establish an integrated collateral architecture across business lines will have a significant competitive advantage. In a dynamic marketplace where business needs and regulatory requirements are constantly evolving, a component-based architecture can be an effective approach. This allows seemingly complex processes to be managed through careful consideration of the distinct business and technology architecture elements of each stakeholder to achieve the appropriate balance for their strategy in an effective manner.

Key Components of Holistic Collateral Architecture

Here are some important drivers to consider in your planning:

  • Real-time inventory management capabilities across business lines that can be leveraged by both the front and back-office. This is a critical component of the strategic architecture, with the key requirement of knowing firm, counterparty and client collateral by jurisdiction.
  • QFC trades repository that is integrated across all Secured Financing Transactions as well as derivatives trades that can be linked with positions, margin calls and collateral postings.
  • Harmonized collateral schedules / legal agreements repository across ISDA, CSAs, (G)MRAs, (G)MSLAs, triparty, etc.
  • Enabling collateral traceability across legal entities with the ability to produce sources and uses of collateral will ensure regulatory compliance, as well as the ability to implement appropriate transfer pricing rules to drive business incentives in the right places.
  • Utilizing optimization algorithms with targeted analytics can maximize a variety of different business opportunities and most importantly recommend actions through seamless operational straight through processing.

This transition can be difficult for firms as it will need to cut across business and functional silos and it can have significant people and organizational hurdles along with technology challenges. One key point is that these changes don’t need to happen all at the same time and firms can prioritize the approach in a phased manner in line with their pain points and priorities as long as leadership is behind the vision of the holistic architecture. Many firms have started this journey and those who can make demonstrable progress in this evolution will have a significant competitive advantage in the new era.

How Transcend can help…

We have leveraged decades of Wall Street experience to develop strategic collateral and liquidity solutions for the largest, most sophisticated banks and financial institutions. Recognizing the unique requirements and opportunities financial organizations have to optimize liquidity and collateral across business units, we have developed solutions that address the need for Collateral Optimization, Agreements Insights, a Margin Dashboard, Real-Time Inventory and Position Management and Liquidity Analytics. Separately or in combination, these tools will help your firm take a more strategic approach to optimizing the best assets across your entire portfolio and businesses to maximize your profitability.

To discuss your firm’s requirements, contact us.

References:

  • January 2013: Basel III: The Liquidity Coverage Ratio and liquidity risk monitoring tools
  • October 2013: Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Working Paper No. 24 – Liquidity stress testing: a survey of theory, empirics and current industry and supervisory practices
  • January 24, 2014: Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) released Supervision and Regulation letter (SR letter 14-1) entitled “Heightened Supervisory Expectations for Certain Bank Holding Companies,” and Attachment Principles and Practices for Recovery and Resolution Preparedness
  • SR letter 12-1 entitled “Consolidated Supervision Framework for Large Financial Institutions”
  • SR 14-1: Additional Guidance from Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System entitled “Guidance for 2017 §165(d) Annual Resolution Plan Submissions by Domestic Covered Companies that Submitted Resolution Plans in July 2015”

This article was originally published in Securities Lending Times.