Post-Trade Scalability: 10 Years Without Re-Platforming

Case study

Cross-border, Asia and global

Investment banking arm of a global banking group

10 years in production

Built to grow into, not out of.

Most platform decisions are judged at go-live. This one has been judged for a decade. The investment banking arm of one of the world’s largest banking groups has run its post-trade operation on NOVA throughout a period of rapid growth in cross-border volumes, institutional mandates and global market participation – and has not had to replace the platform to accommodate any of it.

Client

Investment banking arm of one of the world’s largest banking groups

Context

Sustained growth in cross-border trading and institutional mandates

Scope

Post-trade processing and reconciliation at global scale

Tenure

A decade in production since implementation

The outcome

Volume grew. The operating model did not have to.

65%

Faster trade processing

Cycle times cut as cross-border volumes climbed

70%

Less reconciliation effort

Manual matching removed from the daily run

3×

Data volume growth

0.8TB to 10TB absorbed on the same platform

10 years

In production

A decade of continuous operation, no re-platforming

The test

Growth is the hardest thing to design for.

A platform that only works at today’s volumes is a cost deferred. This one was asked to absorb an order-of-magnitude increase in data while processing had to get faster, not slower.

Rising cross-border complexity

More markets, more counterparties and more currencies, each with its own settlement conventions and reporting obligations.

Institutional client demands

Larger mandates bring tighter service expectations - faster confirmations, cleaner reporting, fewer questions.

Data at a different scale

Volumes moved from 0.8TB to 10TB. Reconciliation effort would have scaled with it under a manual operating model.

No appetite for another rebuild

Growth could not be paused for a transformation programme, and the platform had to earn its place year after year.

The result that matters

Ten years of compounding growth, absorbed on one platform - without a second implementation to fund.

What it delivered

Operating leverage, held for a decade.

Throughput

65% faster trade processing. Cycle times shortened while volumes rose, so growth arrived as capacity rather than as backlog.

Cost of control

70% less reconciliation effort. The most labour-intensive function in operations stopped scaling in step with the business.

Scale

Three times the data volume, 0.8TB to 10TB. Absorbed on the same platform, with no proportional increase in the cost of running it.

Strategic position

A decade of expansion, unimpeded. Cross-border volumes, institutional mandates and global market participation all grew without post-trade becoming the reason to slow down.

Partnership

Ten years, one platform, one team. The relationship outlasted the technology cycle it started in – which is the only durable proof a vendor can offer.

Executive takeaway

Judge a platform on the decade, not the go-live.

Any vendor can show you a successful implementation. The harder question is what the platform costs you in year five and year ten, when volumes have multiplied and the market has moved. Here the answer was measured: faster processing, less manual effort, an order-of-magnitude more data, and no second transformation programme.

Capital markets - engineered

Model it against your next decade.

Tell us where you expect volume, markets and mandates to be in five years. We will show you what that does to your cost to serve on your current stack – and on ours.

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