Strategic Consulting

BPA brings strong capabilities in both business and IT aspects of financial services with particular talent to bridge these two areas for a holistic approach to strategic planning between business objectives and technology.

BPA is very adept at building rapport and trust with C-level decision-makers and translating business needs to technology challenges and IT audiences. Conversely, BPA have expertise at taking IT and systems concerns and outlining the operational issues and risk to business personnel.

BPA offers a solid history of problem solving, organizing and prioritizing delivery of strategic and tactical solutions for financial institutions.

BPA has helped many firms that have wrestled with gathering this intelligence, as outlined in these sample mandates:

• Created enterprise architecture for applications, infrastructure and business processes for several pension plans, institutional asset managers and other asset management firms
• Migration strategy and vendor search for private equity, real estate and/or mortgage support for investment management for several pension, institutional and specialty investment firms
• Executed straight-through processing (STP) strategy and vendor search for trade order management for several investment management firms in Canada, the U.S. and Europe
• Operational review of resources, roles, processes and systems and gap analysis between current state and management strategic direction, complete with migration path recommendations for Canadian and U.S. firms
• Product assessment for several North American based vendors of products for asset managers on strengths/weaknesses and areas for improvement based on industry trends & anticipated client demands
• Data quality, timeliness and management strategies with migration sequencing to data-centric architectures for several firms in Canada, the U.S. and Europe
• Capabilities analysis for a pension firm to absorb asset administration from 3rd parties
• Developed target investment systems architecture for a global insurance and banking firms seeking synergies on their trading desks to “pass the trade book” globally with the sun
• Assisted brokerage firm entering asset management in custodian and BPO options for target-state needs
• Prepared gap analysis for a pension firm with single currency systems and holdings, seeking to expand their investment portfolios to international portfolios
• Vendor searches and business process strategies for front, back and front-to-back derivatives systems
• Pricing and reference data tools, data suppliers’ strategies and vendor tool searches for several firms
• Accounting system searches and upgrades, including IFRS readiness for several large asset managers
• Strategies and system searches for private equity, real estate, infrastructure, energy, mortgages, timber, and/or agriculture for several firms for pipeline management, LP/GP structures through to accounting and disposition functions
• Spearheaded many strategy-oriented mandates on peer comparisons, people/ processes/systems assessments and/or strategic business planning for operational migration and technology improvement
• Participated in many industry initiatives and committees for the improvement of investment management