Waters Rankings 2019: Best Outsourcing Service Provider: Broadridge

A recurring theme in the financial industry is the drive to improve efficiency while cutting costs. This has led to banks having to rely more on third-party solution providers to help them take on some workflows where they can be more efficient.

Broadridge Financial Solutions beats previous winner Electra Information Systems, which had won this category for two years running. Broadridge also won this category at this year’s Sell-Side Technology Awards, held in April.

Kevin Moran, global head of managed services for Broadridge, says the provider’s focus has been on cognitive solutions that combine machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA).

This has led to it introducing pre-trade solutions that perform trade analytics for illiquid securities, post-trade solutions that automate trade allocations for the middle office, and over 40 natural-language processing and machine-learning components that aim to provide a managed-service offering that streamlines workflows.

It also received a patent in 2018 for its proxy voting and repurchase agreements based on distributed-ledger technology. The patent shows how Broadridge’s technology can streamline reconciliation processes, improve data management, and reduce non-value added costs, Moran adds.

Looking ahead, Broadridge will continue investing in its technology platforms and operations services. Moran says Broadridge is in the midst of creating its next-generation post-trade platform called Global Post Trade Management (GPTM), which aims to provide clients with a flexible componentized platform for growth.

The platform puts together Broadridge’s global processing engines with modular components including a global sub-ledger, global position manager, an industry-standard ontology housed within a data fabric, and a next-generation user interface.

“We have several tier-one financial institutions in various stages of transitioning to this new platform,” he says. “We are supporting the industry’s adoption of new regulations like the Consolidated Audit Trail with innovative solutions and expanding our operations outsourcing services to include foreign exchange operations.”