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FTF NEWSCASE STUDIESCASE STUDIES PROVIDE ESSENTIAL INSIGHTEditor’s Note: FTF News has covered a range of operational issues, including firms grappling with wholesale outsourcing, manual processes, application hosting and leapfrogging to cloud computing.The following story excerpts are from ongoing coverage of case studies that FTF News regularly does online.A Broker-Dealer’s Second Leap Into the Leading Edge (March 18, 2014, by Eugene Grygo)Building upon its success with cloud-based corporate actions processing, broker-dealer Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Financial Services (ICBCFS) is taking another leading-edge leap by joining the DTCC’s pilot project to transform corporate actions instruction via the ISO 20022 standard.In 2012, ICBCFS embraced automation by leapfrogging from manual systems to a cloud-based corporate actions processing platform, as detailed in an FTF News story on Nov. 8, 2012. (ICBCFS’ cloud-based project was the recipient of the 2013 FTF News Editor’s Choice Award for Operational Excellence.) The firm is using the XSPrisa cloud offering from corporate actions service provider SunGard XSP.But the broker-dealer’s automation journey clearly was just beginning. The DTCC pilot effort is intended to bring greater efficiency to corporate actions processing by eliminating the DTCC’s proprietary system and manual touch points. The DTCC initiative will be implemented in phases.“We have proprietary formats for disseminating corporate actions data that have existed for 30-plus years,” explains Patrick Barthel, director, product management, asset services, at the DTCC. “We’re replacing that with the ISO 20022 standard.” Barthel manages the ISO 20022-based messaging for the corporate actions transformation project at the DTCC, and he oversees client support.The DTCC’s ISO 20022-based messaging has been available since 2011 for client testing for announcements information. Barthel has been involved with the testing effort on many levels, including multiple levels of connectivity, and with many kinds of clients. He also helps manage standard releases from the DTCC.“I and several members of our team have interfaced with industry vendors and leading corporate actions users during their testing efforts,” Barthel says. “We have helped them confirm their mapping, and do reconciliation between the old, proprietaryformats and the new ISO 20022 standard. We also answer their business and technical questions.”Barthel and others at the DTCC have been working on outbound announcements from the utility to its clients.In general, firms have to work with new file formats, new connectivity and new network setups — basically all the plumbing that’s needed to get the message out from the DTCC to their internal systems.The DTCC has, of course, been in touch with Henry Napier, a vice president overseeing corporate actions processing for ICBCFS. Napier says he strongly feelsthat the ISO 20022 standard is “the future of corporate actions notifications. It’s critical that everyone get involved.”Delaware Investments Says Vendors Do a Better Job of Hosting Their Own Apps (April 23, 2014, by Eugene Grygo) 25Philadelphia-based global asset manager Delaware Investments is a firm believer that vendors can generally do a better job of hosting and managing the systems they create than internal IT and operations staffs.That is the main reason Delaware Investments opted for a private-cloud enterprise-wide implementation of the Investment Management Solution (IMS) system from Charles River for the compliance monitoring and trading of equity and fixed income instruments, says Michael F. Capuzzi, senior vice president and head of investment operations for the firm.Capuzzi has worked in the firm’s operations department for more than 25 years. He has served as vice president of investment systems and as assistant vice president of institutional and mutual fund investment accounting.“We find that the vendors do a better job of supporting their own applications because you have people who specialize inHENRY NAPIERvice president, ICBCFSContinued on Page 26FALL 2014 | FTF NEWS MAGAZINE