Global custodian is pleased to recognize S&P Global with an award for innovation in post trade digitalization. S&P Global has transformed its digital post-trade portal, putting digital solutions at the core, and this has become a key component in a firm's digital journey, as legacy technologies continue to hamper transformation programs. Richard Wilson, Director of Corporate Actions and Securities Processing, discusses the solution, client reaction and how API's are being used in the offering.

Anything that solves the challenges that come with legacy technology captures our attention. Why did you see this as an important factor to address for the post-trade industry?

The evolution of the post-trade security services industry really has been continued to be hampered by a lot of constraints of legacy technology over the years. If you look at it from many institutions, the ability to retire these legacy applications, it might not be an option. And a lot of that's due to a focus on regulatory compliance, you know, the day to day operational efficiencies that they have to achieve. Additionally, there's a lot of industry cost pressures out there, it makes it very difficult for institutions to fund the required investments. To our engagement with our clients, we continue to see challenges within the security services industry. You know, there's been existing legacy infrastructure has curtailed many institutions’ ability really to offer these modern services, digital analytical platforms that their customers are craving. To address this need within that market, what we've done is we've transformed our security services post trade digital portal and really put digitalization at the core of our offering at S&P Global. And we see the portal certainly as a key component in any firm's post-trade digital journey. So implementing our security services solution, and really integrating that with their existing legacy application, it allows our clients to meet those digital service expectations for their clients around reporting, access to data. It also allows their clients to interact with their post-trade environment, it could be holdings, settlements, to electing corporate actions and enable the bank really to achieve a higher level of efficiency by introducing service standardization, harmonization, really across the banks offering within the region.

How have you used APIs in this offering and what benefits does that bring?

Built on an open architecture, APIs really enable the security services portal to overlay that legacy technology and allows it then to provide a single digital face to market really where a common set of services and features can be provided. We've used a standard set of API services really to facilitate data sharing, and service interoperability really which automates that whole information flow, it really removes any dependencies that the solution has on a specific legacy backup system. For us, the benefits that API's bring is that our solution is agnostic to the application, and also to the data storage mechanisms of that underlying legacy platform. It allows our solution really to continue to evolve outside of the typical constraint you'd see on a legacy platform or scalability, performance issues may be evident. So our security services portal also provides a framework for embedding digital client reporting within the UI. This is very much to a modern, responsive user interface and enables our clients and users really to seamlessly interact with the pulse rate environment. Additionally, being agnostic from an underlying legacy platform allows us to add any new functions and service really with ease and then allows our clients to adopt them at their own pace within the legacy technology.

How have you rolled out this solution this far?

So the solution has been very much rolled out in partnership with our clients. And this has been our faith basis across each country within a region. So this has helped us to incrementally integrate independently using our standard set of API's with each distinct underlying legacy technology platform that's used by the banks. Implementing this rollout approach, it's also enabled us to cater for specific individual linguistic interfaces required by our clients within each market and across the bank's regional footprints.

What kind of reaction has there been and how do you see this portal evolving in the near future?

So the reaction to our solution, it's been very, very positive, you know, the solution really has allowed the banks to meet the digital needs of their clients from both a reporting and access to data perspective. And it's really increased the bank's adoption of new technology, removing the need to overhaul their legacy application certainly in the near term. The solutions also accelerate, you know, the bank's digital adoption to enable them to adjust their distribution channels, it provides a single face to market despite having multiple legacy applications. It's also helped them to harmonize their service levels for clients across different countries in the region. But in the end, it's actually the end user client who has really benefited because they now have a seamless, modern interface in their own language, and it's consistent across countries, irrespective of the underlying legacy platform. Certainly from an evolution perspective, I guess for S&P Global, for any product centric investments, we continue with the banks to keep them abreast of any annual ISO based standardization upgrades or any regulatory impacts. And certainly, for any value-add functions or features that we identify these can be built independently into the platform. And these can serve as demand around potential solutions for digital assets or upcoming regulations such as CSDR.