Case study
Global Investment Bank · Markets Front Office & Operations
At a glance
The engagement
Following industry-wide conduct remediation, the bank committed to a comprehensive restructuring of its Markets business. Capmark provided operating model design and implementation leadership across the Markets front office and operations perimeter, working alongside other consultancies, taking the redesign from blueprint through to embedded BAU.
The challenge
Trade Capture Units sat in the Middle Office, creating segregation conflicts and delayed trade entry. Margin and collateral management ran separately by asset class, and operations were trapped in business-aligned silos duplicating confirmations, settlements and reconciliations across desks — while the bank needed to materially lower its cost base without disrupting live trading.
Our approach
We led coordinated workstreams across the Markets front office and operations perimeter, designing the future state and embedding the change through to BAU.
01
Moved Trade Capture Units from Middle Office to Front Office desks, so trades are booked correctly at source and captured at the point of execution, with TCUs reporting to Desk Heads (solid line) and Risk (dotted line). Strengthened the Middle Office trade-control layer to validate bookings, manage exceptions and improve front-to-back control.
02
Created a shared Client Operations model standardising onboarding, static data, documentation and client maintenance across Investment Bank businesses, and repositioned Operations around lifecycle processing: confirmations, settlements, reconciliations, exception management and control evidence.
03
Established a shared Margin and Collateral capability supporting derivatives, Prime Brokerage, financing and clearing activity, and standardised financing operations across equity financing, fixed income financing, repo and securities financing.
04
Consolidated Prime Brokerage and Prime Services operations into a standardised front-to-back service model, and created a common operating model for Agency Derivatives Services, aligning futures and OTC clearing, FX prime brokerage, give-ups and allocations with scalable operational support.
05
Built an Intraday Liquidity and Treasury Operations capability, including rationalisation of legacy liquidity processes and platforms; aligned Risk Solutions activity to the Investment Bank operating model; and created a shared Operations Control and MI layer for governance, risk visibility and execution discipline.
06
Consolidated dozens of trade-capture systems onto a core set of strategic platforms (Calypso for Rates and Credit among them) and established a single golden-source data architecture, with automation targeting 80% straight-through processing.
07
Moved 100+ processing roles to lower-cost locations in India and Poland, supported the separation of Non-Core operations required for business exits, and sequenced the change desk by desk so trading continued uninterrupted while the new organisation, controls and service model embedded into business-as-usual.
The outcome
Trade capture moved into the front office, with trades captured at the point of execution and exceptions visible to the desk. Nine shared services and centres of excellence now carry the operations perimeter — from client operations and lifecycle processing to margin and collateral, prime and agency derivatives, financing and treasury operations — and with 100+ roles moved to lower-cost locations the operations cost base fell materially, with straight-through processing engineered into the platform estate.
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