Schroders have seen a significant increase in their activities during 2007, particularly in the area of derivatives trading, which placed their previous system of handling payment processing under pressure. Many of the payment instructions were unique and this had previously required a higher than acceptable degree of manual intervention.

With ACE's PELICAN in place, Schroders enjoy a high degree of automation of their payment processing, the inbuilt intelligence of the ACE system is able to minimise exceptions and enable a more stream-lined process. This in turn enables resources to be more usefully deployed and greater volumes to be processed.

Commented Matthew Oakeley, Group Head of IT at Schroders, "PELICAN was a cost-effective solution to a business problem at a time when large strategic implementations were not desirable. Our business requirements were met with minimal impact on other initiatives."

Added,Parth Desai, CEO, ACE Software Solutions, "We are very pleased that Schroders have selected PELICAN for their payment processing needs. The system is well proven as an efficient way of automating otherwise laborious tasks and enabling skilled resources to be deployed on payments operations that are more valuable to servicing client needs. The exception management process will automatically repair the message and alert users if attention is required to complete a payment thereby minimising the risk of error and delay in payment. In real terms, the system is flexible and scalable and will support further growth in their business needs which was an important consideration in their selection criteria."