Sapient Global Markets has responded to the need for commodity solutions for non-core operations with a managed end-of-day reporting service called Close of Business Service, or CoBS. The service is designed to help firms reduce reporting complexity and cost, and improve risk control and profit predictability.
The service has been in use by a handful of customers, two of them being global banks, for about nine months and is now mature enough to bring to market more widely. The service is delivered from Sapient Global Services’ locations in India and provides automated and standardised close of business reporting. It is trading platform agnostic and includes real-time dashboards that provide visibility into the operations process. The service can be hosted by Sapient Global Markets or the software can be hosted in-house at firms that prefer to manage their data in an internal environment.
Arun Karur, vice president and head of commodities at Sapient Global Markets, explains: “We focus on managed services and look for opportunities to commoditise and industrialise business processes. CoBS users can hand their daily transaction book to us and we hand it back the next morning, with the data collection, analysis and reporting complete and ready to go. Uses are able to achieve higher predictability, smarter processing and reduced overall risk, while capitalising on the expertise, lower costs and higher scalability benefits that a managed service can provide.”
The service can work across a firm’s global trading locations, gathering business transaction information including P&L, position, mark-to-market and cash flow data, and processing it to produce end-of-day reports. The scope of CoBS includes trading, compliance and risk reporting, with users defining the service to meet their specific needs.
Karur concludes: “CoBS is an evolution for us in the space of services for capital and commodity firms. The way services are accessed and delivered to meet business needs is changing and CoBS is a response to the need for more commoditised services as the regulatory structure puts pressure on costs and companies consider how to improve efficiency.”
