FUND ADMINISTRATION
“I
n financial services, we all have lots of clients, each with dozens of requirements. So how does everyone keep track of all of the work?” asks Ken Ritchie, head of the funds client service team at Highvern. “An LPA can be 200 pages long, add on top of that all the emails, all the capital calls, signing documentations, internal compliance and risk procedures that come with operating in a regulated framework; that amounts to thousands of things all happening at once - how do you manage all of that?”
As Ritchie and his team set about designing their internal processes, they asked other fund administrators how they kept on top of their complex work loads. The most common response was hiring a good team. “But with so many requirements, a good team alone will still miss things,” says Ritchie.
FURTHER AFIELD
Ritchie and his team began to look beyond the financial services space and instead took inspiration from tech companies. Ritchie’s curiosity was piqued when he came across a workflow management solution originally developed by several software companies back in the early 2000s (see box out). “These companies were struggling with their deliverables. The developers would code the software, but it was hard to track progress as different people would be working on different projects and they failed to pin down delivery dates. Plus, there are so many variables while a product is being coded such as new viruses or changes to customer requirements, that by the time the code was finished it would be outdated. These tech companies came together and agreed to send their top project managers away together on a retreat to define best practices. This is how the agile methodology was created - it’s all about being flexible and responsive,” explains Ritchie.
FROM TECH TO FUND ADMINISTRATION
Highvern adopted the agile methodology in three ways. First through its team structure, “We set each team up to ensure they are self sufficient and cross functional. This includes a range of roles and seniority, as well as resource included into the risk forum, someone able to do complex accounting, compliance functions and 22 April 2021
AGILE FUND MANAGEMENT The major advantage of setting up something fresh is having a clean slate with the ability to adopt the latest learnings and technologies. This is exactly what fund administrator Highvern did when it set up its processes and ways of working.
A quick history of the Agile methodology In 2001, 17 software developers met at a resort in Snowbird, Utah to discuss lightweight development methods. During the 1990s, a number of lightweight software development methods evolved in reaction to the prevailing heavyweight methods (often referred to collectively as waterfall) that critics described as overly regulated, planned, and micro-managed. These included: rapid application development (RAD), from 1991; the unified process (UP) and dynamic systems development method (DSDM), both from 1994; Scrum, from 1995; Crystal Clear and extreme programming (XP), both from 1996; and feature-driven development, from 1997. The 17 software developers included: Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, Dave Thomas, Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, Jim Highsmith, Alistair Cockburn, Robert C. Martin, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, and Steve Mellor. Together they published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.
requirements, someone feeding from the team to an internal working group (eg FATCA filing).” Second is through the use of a kanban board (see box out). “This is a visual board that allows you to track all the work that comes in and all the deadlines. The individual tasks move into different columns as they progress (allocated, needs to be allocated, how long, who does it, review). And because it's digital it is tagged and contains information relevant to each task. For example, if you click on a capital call request you can track when it was allocated, when it's due by and other tasks associated with it. The board is a visual representation of what everyone is doing at one time,” says Ritchie. While this kind of visual overview enables all team members to capture everything that is being worked on, it also provides flexibility. “If someone is off sick, nothing is forgotten, we can quickly reallocate the priority tasks. It also helps us to monitor capacity,” adds Ritchie. The third adaptation is through scrum. “Scrum is the heart of agile function,” he says. “It’s the process of assessing deliverables and requirements at the team level and managing it as things change and develop.” Ritchie says that only having a kanban board can get messy if it’s not properly looked after via scrum. “The scrum level means we all get together and prioritise what's on the board for that day, that week, as well as bigger projects.” The Highvern teams hold scrum meetings every morning. “We open up our kanban, look at what needs to be done today, new emails and tasks that have come in, allocate everything and reorganise the board accordingly.” While this structure allows the team to hit the ground running, the fundamental purpose of the agile approach is to be able to keep on top of work as the day and projects progress. “As things come in through the day, things change. We may get a sudden request to do something for an auditor, so then we have a mini scrum and reallocate tasks and change the time table.”
INTRODUCTORY LESSONS
“When I first brought this in, the concept had to be thoroughly tested first, and changing the way people do things is a process in itself,” recalls Ritchie. However, after the initial trial period, the approach proved to be a hit with the team. “The team loved it and didn’t want it removed. Then it was approved and now we wouldn’t know how to work without it.” When asking about how those benefits transfer to the client experience, Ritchie explains, “What
Kanban software solutions Kanban is a project management and workflow method based on a work management system developed in Toyota manufacturing plants in the 1960s. Kanban software tools allow users to visualise work, organise individual tasks and work in a highly collaborative manner.
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Wrike Trello monday.com ClickUp Asana
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Jira Kissflow Project Workfront Mavenlink Clubhouse
the client sees is faster response times, and a team that is consistently up to speed with all aspects of the relationship”. During the trial period, Ritchie says the main teething problem was around adjusting to scrum meetings; to breaking from work to jump into essentially an ad hoc meeting. “Now it’s really easy, especially as we’re all working on MS Teams and the software is all cloud based; we can scrum a single client in less than three minutes.” Given the Highvern team’s success in adapting to this way of working, they’re currently considering formal accreditations, such as ‘certified scrum master’ and ‘teacher’ titles. “By getting staff members certified we would further build on our understanding of the methodology. You can apply it on a surface level, or you can go fully-fledged and use all of the resources. Because it’s been so effective in managing our workload we’re looking to go further,” explains Ritchie. For other organisations thinking about adopting this way of working, Ritchie advises looking first at Kanban software. “That should be the first step and there are lots of providers who offer free trials.” He advises not entering sensitive information if using a free trial, but, “See how it goes in terms of how it can help in managing work, if it’s effective. If it is, then you can expand from there and use larger versions of the software.” ◆ April 2021 23