A natural fit
13 November 2018
Christian Rüffert and Markus Büttner discuss the recent agreement for Hauck & Aufhäuser to licence Comyno’s C-One securities finance enterprise platform
Image: Shutterstock
What is happening in the securities finance space at Hauck & Aufhäuser?
Christian Rüffert: In the past, Hauck & Aufhäuser used the repo and securities lending market irregularly with a very limited group of bilateral counterparts. The markets were only tapped for liquidity management purposes and not seen as an instrument for generating additional value for the bank and its clients.
We started a strategic initiative one year ago to ramp up our securities finance business for various reasons:
What has Comyno got to do with this?
Markus Büttner: Hauck & Aufhäuser appointed us to manage the change process and to provide additional resources as well as strategic advice. We accompanied the team around Rüffert since the beginning of the project with strategic and business consulting expertise.
We are working for Hauck & Aufhäuser Frankfurt and Luxembourg on this initiative across various departments and business lines of the bank and their asset management by defining the target operating model, detailing the business processes as well as transferring further securities lending, repo and collateral management know-how to the involved staff. It was and still is very exciting to work with such a professional team at Hauck & Aufhäuser and see them grow to become a respected market player in that field.
How far are you down the road with your initiative?
Rüffert: We’ve made very good progress in all areas. We were already able to grow our counterparty and client base alongside our business volume.
Additionally, a lot of infrastructural work has been done and with the start of the implementation of Comyno’s C-One platform, another major milestone has been reached.
Why did you select Comyno as your consulting and software partner?
Rüffert: We partnered with them on advisory and IT implementation because of their unique knowledge in the securities finance space, covering the complete value chain.
The analytical request for proposal, which has been conducted by our in-house consulting team here at Hauck & Aufhäuser in Frankfurt, strongly suggested to go with the most modern and innovative IT Platform to support our strategic goals inside and outside of the group, both from an IT perspective as well as a business functionality point of view.
How have you been able to gain this advantage? Could you tell us more about C-One Enterprise?
Büttner: Clearly our advantage is our integrated but modular approach of combining our trading and collateral management functionality with our proven set of connectivity solutions. We bundled all this in our integrated digital platform, Comyno C-One Enterprise.
As a ‘one-stop-shop’ securities finance platform, C-One Enterprise also has made the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) requirements a key part of its data model to make regulatory compliance a no-brainer. Also, we are working with innovative pricing and servicing options to perfectly fit our
customers’ strategies.
Rüffert: I couldn’t agree more—those have been important points for our decision. We are convinced that the focus on the entire value and process chain holds a lot of potential for us and is a key advantage to manage all securities finance and liquidity management related businesses from a single source across all asset classes.
Hauck & Aufhäuser established a platform which is key for the automation of business processes, the digitisation of internal processes, the development of digital products and services, the cooperation with innovative partners and the assessment of investments in fintechs with Fosun.
In other words, ticking all these boxes was a major requirement during the selection process for a state of the art IT platform including data delivery from one single source without raising the risk of being inflexible to react on new requirements.
Therefore, much of the decision was made in favour of Comyno’s team and C-One Enterprise because it was the only platform which could fulfil our internal requirements.
In addition to that, some other factors tipped the scales towards Comyno and C-One Enterprise. As mentioned before, we need to further increase the service levels and product base for our clients. With C-One we can offer a white-labelled routing facility directly to them. We haven’t seen this great functionality anywhere else and it not only fits perfectly to our securities finance initiative but also to our automation strategy.
Comyno are also working in Luxembourg on the asset management side. What’s your current geographic footprint?
Büttner: We see ourselves as a European provider and advisor of securities finance products and strategies. Being in the market since 2006, we’ve always been active in the DACH countries and the EU. However, the current demand for our new C-One Enterprise platform is starting to grow inside and even outside of the EU. I’m sure we will very soon expand to other regions such as North America as well.
Rüffert: For Hauck & Aufhäuser, a German Bank, Comyno is a natural fit, since we have the ‘guys’ around the corner for all consulting and software requirements we might have now and also going forward.
Christian Rüffert: In the past, Hauck & Aufhäuser used the repo and securities lending market irregularly with a very limited group of bilateral counterparts. The markets were only tapped for liquidity management purposes and not seen as an instrument for generating additional value for the bank and its clients.
We started a strategic initiative one year ago to ramp up our securities finance business for various reasons:
- Hauck & Aufhäuser is set to broaden its service level in the asset servicing space by offering securities lending to its institutional clients.
- We see huge benefits in establishing ourselves as the central liquidity hub throughout the company by bringing current activities such as foreign exchange (FX) trading, an expanding securities lending and repo business as well as collateral management closer together.
- The result is a centralised collateral optimisation programme and can be developed into a liquidity platform for Fosun related companies in the Eurozone.
What has Comyno got to do with this?
Markus Büttner: Hauck & Aufhäuser appointed us to manage the change process and to provide additional resources as well as strategic advice. We accompanied the team around Rüffert since the beginning of the project with strategic and business consulting expertise.
We are working for Hauck & Aufhäuser Frankfurt and Luxembourg on this initiative across various departments and business lines of the bank and their asset management by defining the target operating model, detailing the business processes as well as transferring further securities lending, repo and collateral management know-how to the involved staff. It was and still is very exciting to work with such a professional team at Hauck & Aufhäuser and see them grow to become a respected market player in that field.
How far are you down the road with your initiative?
Rüffert: We’ve made very good progress in all areas. We were already able to grow our counterparty and client base alongside our business volume.
Additionally, a lot of infrastructural work has been done and with the start of the implementation of Comyno’s C-One platform, another major milestone has been reached.
Why did you select Comyno as your consulting and software partner?
Rüffert: We partnered with them on advisory and IT implementation because of their unique knowledge in the securities finance space, covering the complete value chain.
The analytical request for proposal, which has been conducted by our in-house consulting team here at Hauck & Aufhäuser in Frankfurt, strongly suggested to go with the most modern and innovative IT Platform to support our strategic goals inside and outside of the group, both from an IT perspective as well as a business functionality point of view.
How have you been able to gain this advantage? Could you tell us more about C-One Enterprise?
Büttner: Clearly our advantage is our integrated but modular approach of combining our trading and collateral management functionality with our proven set of connectivity solutions. We bundled all this in our integrated digital platform, Comyno C-One Enterprise.
As a ‘one-stop-shop’ securities finance platform, C-One Enterprise also has made the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) requirements a key part of its data model to make regulatory compliance a no-brainer. Also, we are working with innovative pricing and servicing options to perfectly fit our
customers’ strategies.
Rüffert: I couldn’t agree more—those have been important points for our decision. We are convinced that the focus on the entire value and process chain holds a lot of potential for us and is a key advantage to manage all securities finance and liquidity management related businesses from a single source across all asset classes.
Hauck & Aufhäuser established a platform which is key for the automation of business processes, the digitisation of internal processes, the development of digital products and services, the cooperation with innovative partners and the assessment of investments in fintechs with Fosun.
In other words, ticking all these boxes was a major requirement during the selection process for a state of the art IT platform including data delivery from one single source without raising the risk of being inflexible to react on new requirements.
Therefore, much of the decision was made in favour of Comyno’s team and C-One Enterprise because it was the only platform which could fulfil our internal requirements.
In addition to that, some other factors tipped the scales towards Comyno and C-One Enterprise. As mentioned before, we need to further increase the service levels and product base for our clients. With C-One we can offer a white-labelled routing facility directly to them. We haven’t seen this great functionality anywhere else and it not only fits perfectly to our securities finance initiative but also to our automation strategy.
Comyno are also working in Luxembourg on the asset management side. What’s your current geographic footprint?
Büttner: We see ourselves as a European provider and advisor of securities finance products and strategies. Being in the market since 2006, we’ve always been active in the DACH countries and the EU. However, the current demand for our new C-One Enterprise platform is starting to grow inside and even outside of the EU. I’m sure we will very soon expand to other regions such as North America as well.
Rüffert: For Hauck & Aufhäuser, a German Bank, Comyno is a natural fit, since we have the ‘guys’ around the corner for all consulting and software requirements we might have now and also going forward.
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