In my quest to cover “A Day In The Life…”, I present Part 2
in this series. The Overall them is
Client Service and is applicable not just to Custodian Banks Bank and Middle
Office, but many other Industries. As noted in my first LinkedIn Pulse Posting,
“
Wall
Street, seen through the eyes of a Student”, I’ve have the opportunity to
see “The Street” very early in my career, and I’m happy to share what I’ve
learned.
In our
previous
segment, we spoke about the monitoring of Trade activity and with primary
goal being to “get in front” of potential issues. As I thought about this
latest segments one of the things I want to cover is Relationships. I mentioned
at the end of the
previous
segment dealing with locating missing funds for your client where the
Paying Agent insists they paid. So my
client, an Investment Manager, had one key question, “Where were the funds?” In
my situation, what was missing was an Income Payment in that should have been
made in cash. The amount was something like forty thousand dollars. I had to conduct a series of Conference Calls
with the Paying Agent Contacts (My firm actually happened to be the Paying
Agent in this case). Key to Client Relationship was continually keeping the
client in the loop. Letting the Client know that while I did not yet have a
final resolution, I was working on getting one.
I learned that the Paying Agent paid this payment and all
income payments directly to a Central Depository, who in turn was to then
credit the various client accounts who were holders of this security. As
fortune would have it, I had contacts at the Central Depository having worked
there as well and also I kept the contact information of key individuals. I
went through the normal channels at the Central Depository who relayed the
information that they could not find any payment that was not paid. I then used
the Manager contacts I had at the Central Depository in hopes of getting more
clarity on what might have happened with the funds. Through these contacts I found out my client’s
funds were sitting in suspense account at the Central Depository unapplied. I
had the funds credited to delight of my client. I failed to mention that client
in the past on their own opened up their own investigation with our Paying
Agent contacts as well as the Central Depository using the regular channels
with no results. You want to cultivate your relationships (keeping names and
numbers) in your career as you never know when you might come full circle and
need assistance. Those relationships were critical in getting the results that
my client was not able to get. I also failed to mention that the client had
this issue as a long outstanding issue and I took on the whole relationship
after this issue had been outstanding for a while.
I’ll repeat that it’s important to keep a Client
Relationship Management (CRM) database always on hand, which can be an address
book in its simplest form. If you regularly email your clients (Internal and
External) and sometimes there are both Individuals and Groups, you will want to
keep within your address book individual names as well as group names. In a global
environment you may have Individuals and Groups located in the U.S., Europe,
Asia, Latin America, South Africa, The Middle East, etc. Trying to remember group names for either
Internal or External Clients can be a challenge, having this info immediately
available in some email programs as soon as you start typing a name is
critical. You may have Counterparty Contacts that you often communicate with,
you may want to have a Group Name representing your contacts at that
Counterparty. Back in the early days we use to have something called, “The Red
Book”. This book contained all the key contacts “On The Street” or rather who
did business on Wall Street. The Red Book would have contacts for various
Departments. Even if the individual contacts changed, the central number listed
in The Red Book would often point you in the right direction. I like electronic
copies recorded in an address book, versus sticky notes and sheets of paper
whenever possible, ensuring that your data is backed up or archived.
Let me also mention that getting the research done and
facilitating the conference calls often happened outside of the working hours
of nine to five. As mentioned in our
previous
segment, it may seem crazy but a lot of what “gets done” in our business is
done outside of the hours of nine to five. When you have a group of clients
that you service, servicing them all and just dealing with the items settling
that day, can take up your nine to five. To “get things done”, you have to,
without question, put in time way before nine and way after five and maybe even
some weekends.
I mentioned in my last segment in addition to dealing with
the client, you also will find yourself dealing with other groups. Some days
you will have to explain to the Accountant why a particular security was booked
the way it was booked. They may need characteristics to verify pricing info as
an example. Compliance Officers may want to question the details of a payment
to a beneficiary to a country on the “Blocked” list. You may be getting a request from an External
Auditor that needs an audited statement. These are the reports that have
already been validated by your Accounting Group. In addition to these groups,
you have may have various other emergency requests that come up. Investigations
alone can often take up a good portion of your day.
Stay tuned for upcoming segments where we will also cover
Foreign Exchange as it relates to our topic with Securities, Cash, Negative and
Positive Interest.
Mike Holman
