“How to connect, resolve and scale?” — 3 questions from The Network Forum

Discussion at The Network Forum’s annual meeting in Athens last week revolved around three areas: how to connect, resolve, and scale.  But before we dive into my findings – from both audience polls and my own anecdotal client meetings at the event – what exactly is The Network Forum?  If you need a refresher, there’s a great video with commentary from Citi and HSBC explaining why the organisation is so important at the bottom of this article.

1. How can we free up operational capacity — while still driving connectivity? 

The need to gain operational capacity was clear. Just take a look at this audience poll which found “insufficient capacity” – either due to budgets being cut or being relocated to elsewhere in a firm – as the number one threat to realising digital transformation ambitions. 

This led to some very useful conversations with our clients after the session on the subject of the Taskize Smart Directory and our drive towards integrations with multiple other platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Symphony. 

High-level challenges to connectivity were covered in the keynote session at the start of Day One which focused on risk, most specifically geopolitical risk. Some great input around operational resilience and four tenets of crisis management:

• Business
• Ecosystem
• Clients
• Staff 

Interesting also to talk around how, as crises inevitably bring unexpected consequences and outcomes, the value of multiple scenario-based playbooks. One of the polls in this session asked, “What do you fear most?” and the answer was geopolitical instability – over economic crises, pandemics, regulation, and cybersecurity. 

2. How can we tackle manual processing — given it’s clearly the sector’s biggest challenge in asset servicing efficiency? 

To quote my colleague Jamie Sukumaran who was also at The Network Forum’s annual meeting, “Manual processing – as you can see below – was found to be by far the biggest hurdle identified in asset servicing.  Even ahead of paper-based forms. 

“Lack of regulation, lack of budget: both of these were way down the list; it’s the lack of readily available automation that’s the problem. 

“On this panel was Philippe Laurensy from Euroclear who spoke with Taskize at another recent event on this exact subject, and how our business and our platform is geared laser focussed on tackling this exact problem.” 

Automation is also one of the key routes towards T+1 but when did the assembled audience think the EU will aim for this directive?  Not until 2028 was the popular vote. This was balanced with feedback from India, where T+1 was completed in Q1 of this year.  

Another key topic of debate: should the UK align with US, or wait for the EU?  Should we even aim to jump straight to T-Zero?  The majority of the audience of network managers voted ‘no’, this would just not be possible, which brought us back round to the initial point on automation. 

3. How can the firms that make up Europe’s network management, custody and post-trade community scale up — and scale fast? 

When asked “what does the term digital transformation mean for you and your business?” the aforementioned opportunities to improve efficiencies and release operational capacity naturally were high. But almost of equal importance to the community is the opportunity it brings “to develop new services and generate new revenue streams.” 

This was a very clear focus in all of my client meetings at the event. And logically so when you consider that no firm wants software purely to make cost savings.  No one wants automation for automation’s sake. But every firm wants to grow, bring new products and services to the market, to thrive and to scale. We heard many positive stats and anecdote sot support this. Not just from a customer success perspective such as mine but also from the broader audience.

So to end with a very positive, proactive audience poll, when asked “what is the data maturity level of your organisation?” 47% of The Network Forum answered as “managed and proactive.” Which is a perfect foundation on which to ‘connect, resolve, and scale’.