In the era of real- time-data and at the dawn of T+1 in Europe, it was essential for CACEIS to take advantage of our strong international presence to adapt the organisational set-up and offer clients a ‘Follow-the-Sun’ framework for service delivery.
The CACEIS group has long operated a Follow-the-Sun “lite” model, where the majority of operations were performed in Europe, with smaller-scale offices in Canada and Hong Kong performing certain time-sensitive operations.
“The acquisition of RBC Europe’s activities has given CACEIS a significantly bigger footprint in Asia (Kuala Lumpur) and in North America (Montreal). These two hubs, combined with CACEIS strong and longstanding European presence, enable CACEIS to roll out its Follow-the-Sun model with an uninterrupted business week” said Christian Nolot, Programm Director at CACEIS.
Each production hub is responsible for processing the available data during ‘daytime’ in its time zone. Therefore, data can be processed anytime and anywhere without interruption from Monday morning to Friday evening. Service delivery benefits from the same time continuous coverage.
The geographical footprint allows the smoothing out of data processing, avoidance of bottlenecks and, above all, to ensure our client have access to the most accurate information as soon as possible- that’s ‘Data Anytime Anywhere’.
Our new set-up was designed with client satisfaction in mind and will enable CACEIS to operate more efficiently and securely while meeting upcoming T+1 settlement timeframes. It is also the opportunity for CACEIS to offer new services to clients.
Reducing the time pressures around cut-offs also allows CACEIS to significantly enhance the management of operational risk.
A “Glocal” model
The Follow-the-Sun model, leveraging staff in our ‘production hubs’ in Europe, Canada and Malaysia, is our nimble and time sensitive operations set-up that maximises efficiencies across the time zones and raises the quality of client servicing.
The 17 entities within the CACEIS network rely on this global organisation to deliver services 24/5 while maintaining local client and market proximity when and where needed.
Key Success Factors
“The set-up centres around an operational ‘handover’ procedure that ensures all required information is passed on to the next team, providing consistent 24-hour client servicing, while also reducing operational risk. Each business line specifies the content required in the handover process as it depends heavily on the free-flow of information” said Christian Nolot.
The Follow-the-Sun model is client centric as it allows CACEIS to adapt its service delivery to client requirements. Whether the client is a UCITS manager, an insurance company, a private bank or any other legal structure, each may have a different international operational set-up for servicing their own clients. Whatever set-up the client uses, CACEIS can adapt its organisation – for example, be face-to-face with an Asset Manager in the North American time zones while supporting its ManCo locally in Luxembourg or Dublin, or a France-based insurance client supported by team responding to queries in its time zone.
CACEIS’ IT division is also adapting its organisational set-up and aligning its main service providers. Even though data remains fully hosted in Luxembourg and in France, CACEIS IT is reorganising to upgrade its platform monitoring capacity using efficient 24/5 business proximity to support service delivery. Proximity between IT and operational teams is a key component in the model’s capacity to deliver services.
With our ‘ONE CACEIS Team’ structure, teams in different locations share the same management line, the same operational procedures, the same control plan, etc..
CACEIS has also finalised the creation of its ‘Knowledge Academy’ that provides state-of-the-art training material and local support for managers and teams, creating and distributing customised training programmes for all our staff. This strengthens our ‘One Way of Working’ across the entire organisation, ensuring consistency in service delivery across our Follow-the-Sun set-up.
Finally, our Data Strategy is centred on four main principles “Anywhere, Anytime, Freshness and Availability”. Making data available anywhere and anytime will allow CACEIS to process data as soon as it becomes accessible, and then making it available to clients just as quickly.
Where we are now…
The framework will be implemented progressively and will be completed by early 2026, enabling us to then start the transition, together with our clients, to a T+1 settlement cycle in Europe. All our teams have been trained on the new systems and are up-to-speed on CACEIS’ legacy systems and are fully integrated into the One CACEIS management model.
Our ability to process data ‘anywhere’ is now confirmed for most services, and it will be fully operational by Q3 2025. For handling ‘data anytime, data freshness and data availability’, the final technical obstacles should be cleared by early 2026.
The framework is already demonstrating initial benefits that respond to client expectations. “For one client, we now deliver the NAV by 4.00am CET, using a process that starts in Luxembourg the previous day with trade management, then pricing performed in Canada, and the final NAV calculation performed by our Asian Hub in Kuala Lumpur” confirmed Christian Nolot.
