Front-to-Back Designing and Changing Trade Processing Infrastructure

In this book, banking and finance expert Martin Walker opens section one with the fundamentals; explaining how capital markets firms make money, what their support functions do and how the infrastructure has to support their needs. Building on this, in section two, Walker describes the problems that have built up over many years and the huge challenges of profitability and complying with regulations since the Great Financial Crisis. Section three of the book highlights the set of strategies investment banks have followed such as simplification, functionalisation and front-to-back re-engineering. Walker critically examines each of these and explains why so many major transformation projects have ended in disaster and large-scale waste. The final section provides the most comprehensive and fad-free explanation of all the technologies that make such great promises to transform capital markets. This section includes the topics, Digital Transformation, the Cloud, Big Data, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, Robotic Process Automation and AI. Martin Walker shows the reader how to design an infrastructure that does the basics well and can respond to changes in regulations without breaking or incurring billions of dollars of costs. Front-to-Back Approaches to Designing and Changing Investment Banking Infrastructures will have a broad appeal across a variety of market participants. Walker has thought about what each group will take away from this book: Bank IT Staff: What to do with their infrastructure, what mistakes to avoid repeating and what solutions to adopt. Technology Firms/Consultancy/Fintech: How to sell their products/services to investment banks. Regulators/Auditors: Where to look for risks and data. Bank Senior Management: How to ask the right questions of technical specialists whether in the bank or employed by Technology Firms or Consultancies Private Equity Firms: Which Fintech firms to invest in.