Case Study for Financial Research and Analysis

The Client

The client is a global asset management firm that uses a proprietary investment strategy to manage investment portfolios spread across 221 countries. It employs a result-driven methodology by deploying a highly effective equity allocation model to make funds perform better than the market average. It manages portfolios by investing in highly diversified and liquidated funds to consistently provide better value to its clients.

Situation - Business Need

In keeping with its business strategies and equity allocation methodologies, the client's requirement was focused on deriving knowledge necessary to exploit key market indicators and indices from across 45 nations after accounting for financial regulations and policies prevalent in those countries. It relied on regular updates on monetary and fiscal policy changes to frame its investment policies.

The client decided to engage our services for research and analysis of financial data in conformance with pre-defined formats, as well as to derive economic report summaries in a phased manner.

Challenges

The challenges that the business situation presented were:

• Employing highly qualified personnel to conduct research and analysis of financial data
• Providing country-wise summaries of economic conditions and its repercussions after deriving and collating data from the Internet
• Presenting summarized information on a 12-point standard format as per client specifications - standards included financial compliance, corporate governance, money laundering, class action lawsuits, financial regulatory mechanisms, and adoption of IFRS
• Providing updates to existing reports in conformance with norms set by the client
• Researching and collating relevant information and presenting it in an understandable summary format
• Facilitating a multi-lingual research solution to support the non-English speaking nations
• Using Microsoft Word as the output format for economic report summaries
• Reporting on major events that affect global markets in accordance with criteria provided by the client

Solution - The Flatworld Solutions Approach

The Flatworld Solutions' approach comprised of the following components:

• Extracting reports in pre-defined templates provided by the client
• Employing the services of a committed team, which included 3 analysts and a senior analyst
• The team had necessary qualifications in Business and Economics, which enabled them to comprehend the nuances of the project and ensure its successful completion
• Earmarking adequate resources to cater to any contingency requirement during the course of the project
• Using discretion while assigning countries and standards to the team members to ensure the right person was assigned to the right job
• Providing updates after careful analysis and research on public domains and authoritative sites, and making use of 'track changes' tool to facilitate reviews. Analysts added updates to the standards template after thoroughly researching relevant public domains for compliance standard updates and extracting useful information from relevant sources
• Deploying the latest security software to ensure top of the line security to client data
• Flatworld Solutions embarked on a highly evolved and rigid 3-tier quality check policy for quality evaluation process- a standard procedure followed in all our Research and Analytics projects
  • Level 1: QC layer involves a self-check by analysts/ senior analyst to comply with the Standard Operating Procedure and Process Check List
  • Level 2: QC layer involves Quality check by the Senior Analyst/ Team Leader for completeness, accuracy and appropriateness of language
  • Level 3: Final QC involves a 'Client Eye Check' by the Project Manager, which includes checking whether the output delivered matches the requirements from the client's perspective

Products and Service used

Flatworld Solutions followed a very strict procedure for conducting research, especially when working on the fiscal and monetary policies prevalent in different countries. The analysts were instructed to use only sources that are authoritative, for instance, the Official IMF site and other country-specific government sites.

The duration of the assignment was 3 months. Flatworld Solutions formed a team consisting of a senior analyst and 3 analysts to work full-time. A plan was formulated to attend to any contingency and make sure there were no disruptions during the course of the project.

Results

• The client was able to capitalize on the competency of a high-quality staff
• Our solution enabled the elimination of overheads associated with employing additional staff
• The client was able to reduce operating costs by up to 50%
• A coordinator, who ensured quality compliance, was the only personnel the client employed
• The client was able to direct its resources to focus on core issues
• Rigorous data security measures deployed by us helped alleviate any safety concern