Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) today announced the launch of Ascendis, the only brokerage-specific business process management (BPM) solution suite from a leading full-service outsourcing provider to the global financial industry.
Ascendis combines business process automation and enterprise notification functionality, enabling retail and institutional broker-dealers and clearing firms to optimize processing activities across the front, middle and back offices.
The Ascendis applications are available as an integrated suite that connects seamlessly with Broadridge's Brokerage Processing Services (BPS) back-office system, or on a platform-independent basis. Benefits to clients include the ability to streamline processes, enhance operational transparency, mitigate risk, reduce processing costs, and reallocate staffing resources to more profit-driving functions.
"As a newly independent company, Broadridge has an opportunity to provide platform-agnostic offerings that meet the needs of a broader universe of broker-dealers," notes Dushyant Shahrawat, Research Area Director, TowerGroup. "Additionally, in this environment of increased IT complexity and rapidly rising data volumes, out-of-the box BPM solutions designed specifically for the brokerage industry will be important to an institution's success."
The Ascendis enterprise suite automates the identification, resolution and communication of enterprise-wide brokerage processing activities. The applications include Margin, Purchase & Sales as well as Corporate Actions. Additional solutions are in development to deliver enterprise processing support for New Account Opening, Asset Servicing, Operations Control Management, Prime Broker Processing, IRA Processing, Mutual Fund Processing and a Management Dashboard.
The Ascendis solutions feature open and flexible application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling data to be ingested from virtually any third-party back-office platform into the Ascendis engine to process business activities based upon client-defined business processing and routing rules. The automation of client-defined business rules enables firms to improve operational risk management, lower costs, boost productivity and ensure consistency in the application of their enterprise policies and procedures.
"Ascendis is the next phase in the evolution of tools we've developed in concert with our clients to help firms that have various systems and processes in place achieve more streamlined and cost-efficient enterprise processing," says Lisa Lidsky, Vice President of Ascendis, Broadridge. "This open and flexible toolset gives firms maximum latitude to leverage customizable solutions from the only company that offers a best-in-class brokerage-specific BPM toolkit."
Ascendis' browser-based interface allows personnel to view cases online, generate email and application alerts and send them to designated user desktops for review, while enabling collaboration among end users online-anytime, anywhere. The solutions give firms the ability to handle increased volume without an increase in staff. In addition to logical event routing, benefits include more efficient use of human resources via enhanced management control, a transparent resolution process, and improved compliance management.