• Jatan Pathak, Head of Product Management, Corporate Actions Data and Managed Service at IHS Markit


• 25.08.2021 09:00 am
#data #managment

The complex bankruptcies, reorganization, and a very high volume of debt restructuring seen during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated the growing complexity of corporate actions. At the same time, the operations teams who had previously managed these functions were shifting focus towards more analytical tasks necessitated by their front office and portfolio managers. These two factors drive significant demand for outsourcing corporate actions functions, such as announcement capture. Even in the case of an issuer “Golden Record”, operations teams still must vet the record against their agent (custodian, sub-custodian, and prime brokers) record to create a final golden copy, a highly time-consuming process.

Following a survey of our customers, it was clear to see that producing an issuer golden record can take between 40%-60% of an operations team’s time based on the volumes and complexity of the corporate actions. There are also increased regulatory pressures with the Shareholder Rights Directive II (SRDII) and new tax regulations, which require a timely, yet thorough review of these corporate actions notices. The survey found that operations teams are continuously asked to do more with less, and they need a service that helps them manage these demands and challenges while augmenting their capabilities.

In response to these challenges, IHS Markit launched its Managed Corporate Actions - Agent Validation Service (AVS). AVS is tailored to meet the operation teams' demands and leans on our 18+ years of experience in the corporate actions announcement space. In addition, the service leverages IHS Markit’s extensive relationship with a network of more than 90 agents. Customers can customize validation processes, deadline management, and narratives by markets and event types to meet their firm specific requirements. The service allows customers to optimize their processes with the help of our experts while maintaining the agreed standards with the front office and PMs.

In one recent engagement, our AVS team worked with a leading investment bank to transform their back-office corporate actions operations, onboarding over 250k+ securities across over 80+ markets and multiple asset classes. During our business process modeling, the teams agreed on over 150 standard operating procedures. This transformation allowed the bank to simplify and reduce their internal processes from 255 to less than 10.

The service leverages our industry-leading Corporate Actions solution that brings together the power of our award-winning validated golden-source data, an industry-leading corporate actions processing platform and a team of industry experts who work closely with customers to understand their processes around narrative scrubbing, tax breakdowns, data changes and recommends procedures to help improve workflow and operational efficiency. AVS also provides unique reporting and insight into the custodian data and performance to help customers make better decisions.