James [00:00:08:14] Hello and welcome to this State Street Video. I'm delighted to be joined today by Gary Marshall, Chief Finance and Operating Officer of River Global plc. Gary, thanks for joining me.
Gary [00:00:18:05] James, pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
James [00:00:21:08] So we're here today to talk about a collaboration between State Street and River Global to move various aspects of their asset management operations and particularly transfer agency onto a single technology platform. Gary, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your organization and, and what led to this decision?
Gary [00:00:35:09] So, James, I'm responsible, as you mentioned, for finance and operations. And obviously the operations function is the key one here at River Global, we are listed company listed in Aim in the UK. But we are quite a boutique player. And we've been operating in the area of asset management wealth management where we've acquired quite a number of companies. We've actually gone through our own transformation just in the last week or so, where we've split our shares and we've renamed the company from Asset Code to River Global PLC. But that's reflecting the business of River Global Investors, which is our main operating company, the one I'm talking about today. But within that, that company we've been trying to put together four entirely separate businesses that, River Global PLC or Asset Code had acquired. So we had four different operating models, with four different approaches to clients. And what was really important for us in going into this process was to try and reach a point where we had a single client face, where a business was much simplified, and where we could look to the, the future with something which is a solid platform working with a trusted, well-known industry player.
James [00:01:45:23] So thinking about your starting point, as we've just been discussing, how did the client priorities, play into this and where was the client journey? And you're thinking?
Gary [00:01:55:02] I think for us the client journey was absolutely imperative. As I said, we were coming from a background of having four entirely different client journeys. So for a client who didn't really know who we were or how to interact with us because we weren't presenting that single face. So for us, that imperative was to make sure that we, considered their view and how they were going to perceive this. We didn't want to disrupt clients and the way through this. We wanted to make sure that clients were looked after and that there was no major disruption to how they were dealing with us today. The existing processes had to continue and therefore be mapped across. the other one was clearly the fact that we wanted to end up with a lower cost solution to, you know, a bit of a tall order in terms of thinking about everything that needed to be done. But ultimately what we're looking for, is trying to meld all those things together into a coherent project plan. So then thinking about where that goes and how they, how the journey would work for us. We were trying to see, well, let's see about how you can deliver the best solution that's possible for this and the best solution for us just seemed to be very sense was a digital solution. And working with State Street, we're very confident with, a very, well resourced, established player with scale and experience and all the capabilities that was ZILO bringing into the equation, we had the ability to have a digital first capability that was going to be transformational to our business. But within the environment of State Street, which was scale, solidity and the ability to deal with all of the, the challenges that might come up in the project for us in digital.
We were looking to all of the elements of that gives us, which is flexibility for client, client, self-serving, client being able to, access data live. We were looking forward to things like the know your client take on process, how that would work much faster, easier interaction, and the ability to verify, online all of these things that are now accepted practice and everyone has available. But we didn't really have that available in our previous set up. So this was trying to get it all into one place and in a much better, position overall. If we're going to do this, we want to do it right, do it once.
James [00:04:16:21] Excellent. Thank you. And, you mentioned this sort of importance of trusted partnerships. How important is collaboration between your organization and State Street? And, our technology partners ZILO in coming together to, to create these changes?
Gary [00:04:29:08] I think for us, partnership, overall partnership is absolutely key to the whole the whole thing and what we were trying to do in forming a partnership with, State Street was also to try and form a partnership with ZILO, as a supplier into State Street, because what we could see was the capability that ZILO presented. But we didn't want to be dealing with a cutting-edge digital platform on our own. That was far too scary in the sense of, not having the ability in a smaller organization to be resourced to manage that, to do all the diligence, to do all the and the research and build it all, into day to day working processes. So I think the partnership was all about the, putting all those things together. And then ultimately trying to point that partnership towards our clients, and make sure that all of the, the steps that the clients had to go through were going to suit this, that client base, we're going to be matched to the requirements that we had going into it, and to go back to the original aims of the project, which were to deliver a better service, to do it more cheaply and to do it more efficiently for our business overall.
James [00:05:40:02] looking to the future. How do you see the transfer agency landscape changing? And how does new platform of yours help you future proof and prepare for that?
Gary [00:05:49:06] I think for us, in the future proofing element, it's all about trying to see that we've built a platform which is going to be resilient and the and the context of our future business and the evolution of the market. But as a boutique organization River Global PLC, we are out there looking for more, businesses we want to acquire, to integrate, to grow. So having the ability to transform those into the same platform, a trusted platform that we knew we can build for the future has got scale. It's got capability, is got the flexibility to do things, and to adapt to what the future may bring, is, is a real key priority for us. And one of the other elements I think you need to bear in mind here when we're trying to look forward, is obviously, you've got to take account of all of the regulatory, requirements that we've got to deal with in the industry and, and those are constantly evolving. So consumer duties, the very clear current focus, and the ability digitally to try and bring that together is important to us, as is all the capability around know your client and anti-money-laundering the client money, which is really complicated in the UK. But you've also got things looking for further out. You got transformation, like for example, T plus one is just on the horizon that we need to look at tokenization going a bit further. You know what, what you know, something that's a digital, capability is going to give you the ability to look at these things. And I'm not saying that we necessarily want to do that tomorrow, but having that, having that ability to start thinking about those and those things have them built into our capability upfront is what we've been keen to keen to achieve. And I think we've got something that gives us that, that starting point that platform.
James [00:07:38:07] Well that's excellent, Gary, thank you very much for joining us. This has been a really interesting discussion about what's said to be a really fruitful partnership.
Gary [00:07:44:21] Absolutely. Certainly enjoyed it James, and thank you for having me again.
