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
Athanase Consulting supports asset and wealth managers in simplifying, streamlining, and accelerating their processes to enhance quality, productivity, and innovation capacity.Our approach covers the entire improvement cycle, from diagnostic and design to implementation and performance monitoring.
- 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.