“The DCM market is critical to corporate financing in Europe, but the new issue execution process hasn’t been modernised. Everyone knows this, but until recently, banks didn’t always look at DCM in ways that captured the full costs, with front office bankers being measured on deal profitability and league tables. Now institutions know they’ve got to take out costs, automate and externalise functions – not least because borrowers are asking intelligent questions.” Spencer further highlighted: “In 2018 in Europe borrowers paid around $5.7 billion in new issue fees. However, with the high cost base for dealers in the industry the margins are small. Therefore, taking unnecessary cost out of primary market administration is now firmly on the radar of both treasurers and dealers.”

“This platform delivers proven technology to drive efficiency and enable compliance. It brings front-to-back automation to new issue execution management, taking out redundant and duplicative activity. End-to-end automation and minimisation of touchpoints removes cost, and because steps that currently occur consecutively can occur simultaneously, it also takes out time. It’s Workflow-as-a-Service, automatically managing information for each part of the new issue process, so dealers can deliver digital capital markets services to their clients”.

“This is a powerful collaboration for innovation in an important and complex market. Working with the grain of new issue dealers and their embedded market knowledge is the only way to identify and drive sustainable change. Listening to the market is critical to ensure innovation is feasible and relevant, and that’s already generating a positive response.”