Financial Markets
Financial markets are constantly evolving – new regulations, technological innovations, and changing market conditions demand agility and precise strategies. Our financial markets consulting provides you with in-depth analysis and practical solutions to strengthen your market position. We help you identify market opportunities, ensure regulatory requirements, and optimize your trading strategies. With our help, you can successfully navigate the complex landscape of financial markets and maximize your competitiveness.
Trading & Sales
We focus on aligning your product range and processes to your strategic focus and target customers.
This approach involves three elements:
- Identifying the appropriate target customer group
- Adapting the process structure
- Increasing efficiency through digital transformation
We draw on many years of experience with an in-depth understanding of products and processes. We take regulatory requirements into account and facilitate the use of digital capabilities through appropriate software support. Our distinctive solution competence ensures customer loyalty and sustainable earnings.
We are passionately committed to your success and will actively support you through every step of the implementation process.
Our Services
- Distribution advisory
- Structuring
- Corporate sales
- Sales intelligence
- Product management
- Business strategy
- Business analysis
- Project management
- Reorganisation
- Implementation
Areas, processes and products
- Market analysis
- Client-clustering
- Wallet-sizing
- KPI Benchmarking (products, processes, revenues)
- Product development, such as tailored derivatives solutions)
- Product implementation (NPP)
- Sales-process optimisation
- Sales support and coaching
- Hands-on co-working
- New asset classes, such as ESG products
- New sales and trading approaches, such as AI guided processes
- New processes, such as front office digitisatio
Risk services
At LPA, we support you with various aspects of risk management, ranging from strategy and model development to regulatory requirements.
Risk management is a core functionality for all financial institutions. While some risks are well-defined and regulatory driven, others surface unexpectedly. This is due to dynamic technical and business environments, where various risks, including cyber risk, for example are developing rapidly. Financial institutions are therefore required to be adequately equipped to better identify risk, navigate new risk, and evaluate how risk can be best managed on a company-wide basis.
Our risk and portfolio engines measure and quantify different risks and can sustainably insource your current risk functions. We remain at the forefront of innovative risk management through building and implementing Standard or AI-driven models, new risk approaches, and more.
We cover the entire spectrum of risk support. In recent years, we have focused on the following regulatory, quantitative, and qualitative topics.
Risk services
- Digital risk transformation (24/7 lombard loan modelling)
- Risk change (Basel 4)
- Strategic risk management
- Risk culture and governance
- Capital management, optimization, and planning
Risk services
- Market risk (FRTB-SA, FRTB-IMA, IRRBB, FX risk and automated FX hedging)
- Interest rate risks (IBOR reform)
- Credit risk (risk change, capital management, SA-CCR, CVA, CXA, model enhancements, AI model upgrade)
- Operational risk (resilience, data management, governance, standard approaches)
- Liquidity risk (LCR, NSFR, or ILAAP)
- Enterprise risk management (aggregation, integration, and allocations)
Risk services
- ESG risk management (reporting, gap analysis)
- Model validations and development
- Independent pricing services (linear and non-linear products for over 70 derivatives)
- Clearing and collateral reforms
Compliance
Digitalization, new regulations and other market developments are changing the requirements for the compliance function in the financial services industry. Protect your company from criminal and regulatory sanctions as well as reputational damage that can result from non-compliance with legal requirements. With our unique combination of in-depth industry and product knowledge as well as technological expertise, we provide your company with high-quality compliance advice, especially in the areas of capital markets compliance and financial crime compliance. We possess deep expertise regarding regulatory requirements, business processes and new technologies.
Capital Markets Compliance
The aim of capital market compliance is to protect market participants (especially retail investors) from misleading and fraudulent behavior such as market manipulation, insider trading or false investment advice. Changes in compliance risks arise in particular from the increasing use of electronic trading systems and high-frequency trading, digital advisory processes, and new technologies such as the development of crypto-assets. In addition, the consideration of ESG factors is leading to increasing requirements in investment advice and product governance.
For these reasons, legal rules on the transparency and integrity of financial markets, investor protection and trade surveillance are constantly being adapted and tightened. At the same time, new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities for more efficient monitoring and mitigation of compliance risks. Banks and financial service providers must therefore regularly review their systems and processes and adapt them to changing conditions. LPA has unique know-how in the capital markets sector as well as many years of experience in the implementation of regulatory requirements (e.g., EMIR, MiFID II / MiFIR, MAR) and the selection and introduction of new surveillance systems. Our experts are happy to support you in all challenges of capital market compliance.
Financial Crime Compliance
Modern financial products and ongoing innovations, particularly in payments processing, harbor the risk of being misused for criminal activities. The aim of financial crime compliance is to prevent banks from involuntarily aiding and abetting money laundering or terrorist financing or evading sanctions against states and individuals. The procedures used for this purpose (e.g., to implement the Know-Your-Customer principle or to investigate a suspicion of money laundering) are often characterized by a high level of manual effort. New systems and technologies offer the potential to improve risk coverage and increase the efficiency of monitoring processes. We are happy to support you in optimizing compliance with legal regulations (e.g. AMLD) to prevent financial crime.
Our services
- Project management
- Vendor selection and system implementation
- Health Check for reviewing existing processes and systems
- Gap analysis in order to identify surveillance gaps
- Data analysis / parametrisation of surveillance scenarios
- Target Operating Model (TOM) / process design
Treasury
We believe that the treasury function is the central gatekeeper between the financial market and the profitability of the balance sheet. Treasury protects the value of the company, while ensuring healthy returns on risk.
Our expertise cover all aspects of the financial value chain and support you with managing the challenges of the market, as well as your transformation to a new prosperous future.
We master the combination of thorough product understanding, the relevant regulatory framework and the technology required for secure and efficient operations.
We enable your treasury function to anticipate and adjust to the dynamic financial market.
Services
- Market transformation due to distributed ledger technology (DLT) and crypto assets
- Advanced analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) and big data
Areas
- Asset liability management (ALM)
- Liquidity management across all durations- Integration of cash and collateral management.
- Market risk management
- Fund transfer pricing in the risk-free rate framework
- ESG and green funding
Post Trade
Post trade is a complex, highly regulated aspect of the value chain. It consists of different asset classes, far-reaching possibilities for product and process mapping, and ultimately the question of whether processes should be mapped in-house, purchased from service providers or even taken over completely. This challenge means that issues such as standardization, phantomization and the digitalization of processes and products are becoming increasingly important.
For over 20 years, we have been supporting leading investment banks, asset managers and exchanges with strategy development and implementation, as well as sustainable further development of their processes and services.
Operations
- Regulatory compliance
- Settlement efficiency
- Standard software implementation
- Outsourcing
- Technology strategy (traditional vs. new IT)
Collateral management
- Inventory management
- Collateral allocation optimization
- Eligibility screening
- Liquidity buffers sizing
- Workflow streamlining
Regulatory reporting
- Regulatory compliance
- Standard software implementation
- Harmonization and standardization
Information Technology
Automation, microservices, smart solutions, big data, no-code and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are shaping digital transformation in the financial services industry. Not only systems, but also banking business models are being disrupted by this development.
For over 20 years, LPA has been supporting leading investment banks, asset managers and exchanges with digitization. We drive innovation, support with regulatory compliance, and help generate your competitive edge.
Services
- Implementation and transformation of standard banking software solutions
- Support with IT compliance to standards regarding EBA and BAIT guidelines
- Implementation of smart solutions including use case validation, realization and integration
- Support on business processes or entering new business areas with advanced analytics
- Implementing data governance frameworks in the context of BCBS239
- Future proofing of capital markets and banking business architecture
- Test automation strategy development and implementation of frameworks
- Consulting on process digitalization and automation by leveraging state of the art technology such as microservice, APIs, big data, DLT and no-code platforms
Transaction Banking
The speed of disruption in transaction banking brings a new set of challenges in the financial services industry. Accelerate your business transformation, establish sustainable business models and unlock the full potential of your business by leveraging our deep domain expertise and experience.
We support you in navigating the changes in trade and export finance products and payment processes driven by regulatory requirements, economic disruptions and emerging technologies.
Trade Finance
We are experts across the entire value chain and spectrum of trade and export finance products. We have a thorough understanding of the criticality of the current macro-economic situation for this business enrich our services.
At LPA, we help you navigate digitization, leverage DLT, create ESG products, and expand into new business areas such as inventory finance and supply chain finance and more. Our business and IT transformation services span through all relevant trade finance products including:
- Letter of credits (import and export)
- Collections (import and export)
- Guarantees / sureties / SBLC
- Supply chain finance
- Open account
Payments
The latest trends in digitalization play a significant role in the complex payments market. Successfully navigating this is critical to the market participants.
Our services, including our deep domain expertise, technology and innovation acumen, and pragmatic consulting approaches support payment services providers solve challenges in the following areas:
- Digital currencies (Digital Euro, CBDCs)
- Central bank regulations and standards
- Target landscape incl. instant payments (TIPS)
- CBPR+ / ISO 20022 migration
- Payments processing of crypto assets
- Modern business applications and platforms for payments
Get in contact
Want to know more about our Consulting Services? Then simply contact us. Our team of experts will be happy to help you and look forward to hearing from you.