BNP Paribas Securities Services e-enables retail fund managers with new Caché e-commerce solution

Key Benefits

  • The Web
  • High Performance
  • Scalability

The arrival of e-commerce has increased consumer expectations about how they interact with banks. In particular, consumers expect better communications with fund managers and the ability for online access of their investments such as ISAs and PEPs.

With an overall turnover £50 million per year, BNP Paribas Securities Services handles the investment processing for approximately 400,000 investors on behalf of its clients every year in the UK alone.

BNP Paribas Securities Services is the international investment operations business of BNP Paribas of Paris, France. BNP Paribas Securities Services provides a comprehensive range of investment administration services to over 60 clients in the UK and Europe. Using InterSystems' Caché e-DBMS technology, BNP Paribas Securities Services now can enable fund managers to offer their end investors the ability to view PEP and ISA account details online and initiate transactions over the Internet. Investors can register, view past transactions, complete online application forms, view detailed valuations and account statements, amend income details and direct debit instructions, and change their security details. As a business-to-consumer e-retail solution, the fund managers' front end applications integrate with BNP Paribas Securities Services' back end systems-while remaining invisible to the end investor.

"Essentially, we are e-enabling our clients," said Tony Solway, Managing Director of BNP Paribas Securities Services. "Our e-commerce solution is designed to sit within our clients' own Web sites. It is branded in such a way that end investors, for all intents and purposes, believes that they have accessed the fund manager's own Web site."

Solway added, "As a business server provider, BNP Paribas Securities Services is committed to equipping its clients with the solutions they need to operate in an increasingly competitive and 'e-enabled' marketplace. As end investors take greater control of their financial futures, so fund managers are finding themselves under far greater pressure to provide their investors with accurate and timely data, via the Internet. BNP Paribas Securities Services' strategy has been to offer fund managers access to the technology they require to achieve their business objectives, and at the same time, enable them to benefit from the economies of scale we can provide."

The company has been using InterSystems technology since 1984, and recently went through a market evaluation to move its core transaction systems onto the Web. Solway was chairman of the steering group that evaluated the technical options for moving forward.

"We made the decision to stay with Caché
because of the tremendous operational gains we could reap with Caché. "

-Tony Solway
Managing Director
BNP Paribas Securities Services Operations, Ltd.

"From a technical perspective, we needed to draw a line around our legacy transaction systems, which were written in previous versions of the InterSystems technology," said Solway. "We then had two options-plug in something new or extend the InterSystems environment out onto the Web using Caché. From our perspective, this was a very difficult decision to make. We had long-standing happy users of the legacy InterSystems technology. It is a fast, scalable, and productive operational environment and they loved using it. We felt that the extension of its scope was a specialist area that required a specialist skill set. We made the decision to stay with InterSystems because of the tremendous operational gains we could reap with Caché by using it to extend our retail investment administration service onto the Internet environment. We are extremely pleased with the speed and robustness of the development. It has provided us with a reliable infrastructure from both a hardware and software perspective. We were able to cross-train our core Caché developers to build their skill as web technicians."

BNP Paribas Securities Services' application went live after a successful pilot period. The service will be rolled out later this year to other of their UK based fund managers operating in the retail marketplace. By using Caché's application layer and linking the old transaction system to the new Web front-end environment, BNP Paribas Securities Services has been able to deploy the new application with no discernible break in business flow as Caché integrates with their old application.

Cap Gemini runs BNP Paribas Securities Services' hardware in a secure site in Vauxhall, London. As a true 24 x 7 site, the application does not come down and has a three-tier client server architecture comprising a database server, application server and Web server layers, all of which are duplexed. A Java applet is used to build the HTML pages from Caché. Today, the application has the capability to handle more than 10,000 enterprise critical Web pages per hour, all the while maintaining the full 24 x 7 support.

"Our business is growing extremely fast. For us to be able to build and deploy an e-commerce solution from a standing start this year has given us tremendous advantage over our competitors," said Solway. "We are extremely pleased with the speed of our progress and the benefits we are now able to deliver to our clients. In an increasingly competitive marketplace it is essential that we enable our clients to compete successfully in the race for retail assets."