overview

Who:

Argentière, a Swiss investment management company that deploys capital across a range of liquid strategies, seeking to identify and take advantage of the most attractive risk-adjusted opportunities across markets.

Project:

Custom Web App Development

the challenge

Argentière needed to be able to prove compliance with all the rules and regulations which control the financial sector in Switzerland.

The compliance managers needed to adapt to changing rules and regulations, as well as being able to see the company’s compliance status in real-time. Busy employees needed to be reminded when their regular assessments were due and re-reminded when they were late in completing these tasks.

business drivers

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008/2009, Switzerland launched a massive overhaul of its financial regulations. These changes, along with more exacting international capital and liquidity standards resulted in an increased reporting burden for all financial institutions in Switzerland.

To remain compliant and ensure accuracy of data Argentière appointed Applicita to develop a custom web application.

the solution

Applicita worked with Argentière to understand their intricate business operations and the wider impact to create a detailed specification of the application. With the large amounts of data, and the evolving nature of the regulations and compliance metrics, Applicita scoped and built a modern web application hosted in Microsoft Azure. The key to the success of the solution was to increase the efficiency for employees, to remove cumbersome processes and ensure compliance.  

Applicita employed a simple language to address one of the key customer requirements of a ‘user friendly interface’, which minimised both the training and support requirements, creating time and financial efficiencies. Applicita built a self-service portal for employees and the compliance managers to complete and author the assessments as well as a background scheduling process to analyse and automatically notify all staff when the assessments are due.

Argentière now has a has a real-time view of their own compliance which supports its corporate governance and can be verified by the financial regulators. Employees are now able to ensure they manage and maintain their own compliance status faster than ever before, enabling internal compliance teams to provide greater support where required. The application was shortlisted for Thomson Reuters Annual Compliance Awards and its success has led to similar engagements from other financial institutions.