Max Matthiessen, a leading financial services provider, selected FA Solutions to enhance its portfolio management and trading processes.

The FA Solutions software allowed Max Matthiessen to automate its trading processes, resulting in significant time savings and reduced operational risk. The project also positioned Max Matthiessen for future growth, allowing for new portfolios and clients without increasing its back-office team. This success is a testament to FA Solutions’ collaborative and tailored approach to delivering efficient and growth-enabling solutions for its clients.

Background
For 130 years, Max Matthiessen has helped companies and individuals make informed decisions about pensions, insurance and investments and has been a client of FA Solutions since 2019. With over 450 employees across 30+ locations and a gross turnover of approximately SEK1.5 billion, Max Matthiessen has sustainably grown its provision of comprehensive savings and insurance solutions to the financial services market.

In 2019, as part of its larger investment into wealth management, Max Matthiessen expanded its customer offering with several new services. With the introduction of the FA Solutions software, Max Matthiessen introduced more discretionary services.

FA Solutions was selected to provide the core portfolio management, rebalancing, trading routines and other investment functionalities as well as providing the tailored client portal. The project was successfully completed below budget within four months.

Fast forward to 2023, with assets under management seeing strong growth and new strategy launches in the pipeline, Max Matthiessen needed to ensure its software choices remained robust and futureproofed for the next five years and beyond.

The challenge
Through continued year-on-year growth, Max Matthiessen inevitably encountered the requirement to launch new strategies to continue its aspirations and meet ever-growing customer demands. This consequently led to higher trading volumes, and it started to become apparent that processes that were previously effective for lower volumes and diversity would no longer suffice.

“With our growing volume of trades, the manual process was no longer sustainable. We were constantly at risk of missing deadlines, and the margin for error was uncomfortably high." - Annie Zinders Wu, Portfolio Implementation Manager & Head of Back Office Operations, Max Matthiessen

However, the challenge was not just a matter of efficiency. It was also the familiar challenge of how a wealth and asset manager can ensure the integrity and reliability of their trading operations as they grow and scale at minimal cost and disruption to the day-to-day and client experience.

Adding more personnel to the process would not be efficient. However, neither would engage in costly or arduous implementations, expensive upgrade processes or introducing entirely new software or systems to meet future business needs.

Instead, Max Matthiessen looked to a solution that would maximise the value of its existing systems and workflows to ensure they evolve in line with their continuing expansion.

The solution
The Max Matthiessen operations team contacted FA Solutions in April 2023 to discuss how to tactically enhance its growing trading workflow. Initially, an identified solution centred around a semi-automated approach incorporating a file-based export-import workflow into the trading platform.

Understanding the continued growth trajectory and the need for a more strategically efficient trading process became apparent. FA Solutions then worked with Max Matthiessen to identify a more comprehensive approach to deliver a robust and cost-effective process for future growth.

Subsequently, FA Solutions designed and developed a seamless file flow, incorporating the aggregation and execution of orders that consequently automated all mutual fund trading. The system not only adhered to ISO 20022 standards but, importantly, catered for the specific configurations required to accommodate Max Matthiessen’s counterparties’ unique requirements.

“Our objective was to provide a solution that not only addressed Max Matthiessen’s immediate needs but also anticipated future requirements. The automation we implemented is about improving efficiency and ensuring operational security, going beyond the initial concept for a semi-automated process.” - Johan Nordmark, Product Management and Emil Cederberg Senior Service Consultant, FA Solutions

A noteworthy aspect of the project was FA Solutions’ ability to deliver the product development without disrupting its existing commitments, incorporating it into its systematic release cycle, ultimately ensuring a faster time to market while still retaining security within the product release.

Understanding the importance of flexible interoperation is key to the development of the FA Solutions systems. Working with a client such as Max Matthiessen provided an opportunity to improve the FA Platform for not only Max Matthiessen but many other clients utilising the same trading connections.

FA Solutions undertook the point role in driving the project, including managing communication with the counterparty, client and FA, which relieved Max Matthiessen of the need to lead a technically complex project. This approach again contributed to the project’s feasibility as it unlocked valuable time and resources.

Results and impact
FA Solutions is committed to delivering bottom-line value when undertaking projects. In doing so, we strive to understand the impact of deploying our solutions and (always free) upgrades.

Project deliverables:

• Time reallocated to higher value-generating activities
  Automating the trading process at Max Matthiessen led to significant time savings. The manual trading process, which had grown to around two hours, was reduced to an instant ‘press and send’ action. This efficiency gain has resulted in the Max Matthiessen staff reallocating 500 hours per year to its clients and strategic tasks.
   
• Reduced operational risk and robust investment processes
  By eliminating the need for manual double-checking of trades (the growing scale of the business posed a risk of human error), the dependability of the trading processes was ensured. The automation has systematically ensured that high standards of accuracy are met and allowed time to be reallocated to interpreting the data rather than more time spent managing its integrity.
   
• Business expansion support
  Automation of the trading process will enable Max Matthiessen to add new portfolios and customers without increasing its back office team size, contributing to a streamlined workflow and cost-effective delivery.

Conclusion
Within six months, FA Solutions was able to fully renovate the investment process to automate several manual tasks, removing operational bottlenecks and potential points of risk, delivering superior efficiency and ultimately empowering Max Matthiessen to continue to offer a robust investment experience for their clients.

The successes Max Matthiessen experienced with FA Solutions are a testament to the power of collaboration and a tailored client service.

“The FA team delivered a solution that exceeded our expectations. Their constant ability to drive the product forward and deliver a new automated trading process within six months was remarkable.” - Annie Zinders Wu, Portfolio Implementation Manager & Head of Back Office Operations, Max Matthiessen

The project resulted in a win for Max Matthiessen, but with the cloud architecture of FA Solutions, all FA Solutions clients can benefit from the automation put in place.

This practical approach of building solutions for a single situation but with a view of benefiting multiple clients means the running costs become much more efficient, and the opportunities are shared and consequently increased across the market.

“Investing in cutting-edge software such as FA Solutions that evolves with our business is not an expense but a strategic investment that facilitates our continued growth and operations to deliver the high expectations our customers hold of us. Having a partner understanding both our business and ambitions is key to both identify the optimal technical solution and to delivering the solution in a timely and cost-efficient matter. For this I´m very thankful for the partnership with FA Solutions.” - Henrik Nilsson, CEO, Max Matthiessen

FA Solutions continues to invest in leading industry expertise and talent and understands the importance of deploying these on-site with a deep understanding of our customers.

“Having a team that understands our needs and communicates in our language was crucial to the success of the project. Understandably, a 15-minute meeting with the FA team was more productive than exchanging 100 emails.” -Annie Zinders Wu, Portfolio Implementation Manager & Head of Back Office Operations, Max Matthiessen

This collaboration highlights FA Solutions’ commitment to supporting the continuous growth of its clients. By offering bespoke solutions and managing projects effectively, FA Solutions demonstrates its ability to deliver efficient, risk-mitigated and growth-enabling solutions.

Read the original case study here.