An institutional banking client approached us after having implemented a new system for the trading desk of the Foreign Exchange group.  The software vendor and bank’s IT teams had linked the new software to the back office systems that confirmed and executed each order, but the accounting team was unable to match the totals generated be each system, with a discrepancy of nearly 22 million Euros.

 

To add to the complexity of the problem, the Euro had been introduced in January 1999 so a trade may have been completed in any Euro-zone country currency, Euros or a partial mix of the two.  

 

Our financial team analyzed tens of thousands of trades confirming amounts, dates, counter-parties and currencies to identify the system issues leading to the discrepancies.  We then reviewed the systems’ automated processes and worked with the IT teams to rewrite code and reprogram the system logic to eliminate system risks and prevent future trade breaks.

 

Tools, Systems and Resources utilized:  

Sybase SQL

Microsoft Office, VBA

Visio