Challenging market realities continue to disrupt business as usual throughout the financial services industry, and it's motivating financial institutions such as buy sides and regional banks to re-examine new managed-service models that enhance agility and responsiveness in a highly regulated space. In addition to increasing regulatory oversight, buy and sell sides alike are being tested to the limits of their internal capacities by issues such as market and workforce volatility and client-service expectations. 

Workforce volatility

The shift to remote work in recent years underscored how fragile business as usual could be, and how essential it is to safeguard business continuity by finding creative ways to build more resilience, flexibility, and capacity. Meanwhile, ongoing talent shortages have pushed more market participants to turn to contingent workforce options.

Time-to-market urgency

Financial institutions are facing unprecedented market volatility that is making time-to-market more urgent than ever before. Cost-cutting and austerity mandates have given way to growth imperatives and a focus on revenue optimisation, both areas where managed services are proven to deliver results.

Regulatory demands

Regulatory pressure has created a need to meet increasingly aggressive processing and settlement times. Technology-enabled service providers can not only help clients meet the requirements of current and upcoming global initiatives such as European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) Refit, the commodity futures trading commission (CFTC), and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) but also alleviate the workload surges created by a new regulatory change or cyclical reporting cycle.

Client expectations

The successful digital transformation of financial operations has set lofty expectations among investors and other financial. The ability to deliver secure, transparent, accelerated service is now integral to operational due diligence, signalling to prospective customers and investors that the service organization can be trusted to meet and continuously evolve with market expectations.

Managed solutions

These market pressures are both significant and urgent, and managed services offer solutions that deploy more rapidly and deliver greater flexibility than internal resourcing. New service models accommodate a wider range of needs, from an on-call fractional hire to an output-based service that blends human capacity with process improvements and technology enablement.

To learn more, download "Demystifying Managed Services for Financial Institutions," an S&P Global white paper. This examines the state of managed services for the financial industry and defines the service models and evaluation points business leaders need to understand. You can download your copy here.