OPERATIONS
The need for continuous adaptation and transformation is multifaceted and highly structural, often impacting the organization’s entire operating model (outsourcing / offshoring strategies, data management, technological and digital revolution…).
Athanase Consulting supports asset and wealth managers in designing and optimizing their organizations to strengthen operational performance, compliance, and agility:
- Assessment of the existing operating model (diagnosis of process efficiency and performance, peers’ benchmarking)
- Definition of the target operating model and target architecture aligned with strategic objectives (including outsourcing options analysis)
- Design of target Front-to-Back operational processes and associated roles and responsibilities
- Change management support
Accompagnement dans la simplification, la fiabilisation et l’accélération des processus à des fins de gain de qualité, de productivité et de capacité à innover. Notre accompagnement couvre tout le cycle d’amélioration, du diagnostic jusqu’à la mise en œuvre et au suivi de la performance.
- Diagnosis of Existing Processes (e.g. NAV production, control and dissemination / monitoring and processing of corporate actions / management of performance fees / reporting production / etc.)
- Mapping of operational workflows and identification of pain points
- Measurement of performance (cost, time, quality, client or user satisfaction)
- Analysis of operational and compliance risks
- Review of Operational Efficiency
- Benchmarking against market best practices
- Analysis of the Front-to-Back operating model and interfaces
- Identification of pain points, redundancies, or non–value-added tasks
- Redesign of workflows based on Lean / Six Sigma principles
- Simplification and standardization of operations
- Definition of roles & responsibilities (RACI), governance rules, and key controls
- Development of automation scenarios (RPA, low-code, AI)
- Change Management
Athanase Consulting provides comprehensive, end-to-end support for operational transformation projects, including:
- Impact assessments (system replacement, reorganization, new regulatory requirements, etc.)
- Project scoping, facilitation of business / IT / Data / external provider workshops, and drafting of business requirements
- Development monitoring, preparation of test cases, coordination of UATs, validation reports, parallel runs
- Change management, including user training and operating procedures
Athanase Consulting provides end-to-end support for activity migration projects (fund transfers, portfolio migrations, service provider transitions, etc.), including:
- Definition of the migration strategy and target operating model
- Assessment of functional impacts and process adjustments
- Design of a step-by-step migration program with clear allocation of roles and responsibilities
- Parallel run and dress rehearsal coordination
- Change management and post-migration actions
Athanase Consulting provides end-to-end support to help asset & wealth managers strengthen their operational resilience framework:
- Regulatory compliance & diagnostic: maturity assessment, mapping of risks and critical services, gap analysis, and remediation plan.
- Business Impact Analysis & continuity targets: BIA execution, definition of RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective), process prioritization, impact thresholds, and dependency mapping.
- Business Continuity Plan (BCP), Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) & crisis testing: update of continuity and IT recovery plans, development of severe but plausible scenarios (cyberattacks, third-party outages, custodian unavailability, data corruption), table-top exercises, and regular testing.
- Major incident governance: operational runbooks, escalation procedures, investor/regulator communication protocols, NAV error management, post-mortems, and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) with corrective action plans.
- Critical third parties & concentration risk: due diligence of key service providers (custodian, administrator, cloud), SLAs/KPIs, continuous monitoring, exit strategies, and fallback solutions.
- Oversight & culture: operational dashboards and KPI/KRI tracking (same-day matching, CSDR fail rates, system availability, ageing of exceptions), management reporting, and staff awareness & training programs.