While they are critically important, there is much more to the outsourcing conversation than just the short-term operational gains.

At the beginning of the journey, outsourcing has helped our customers remove many daily processes and checks, which means obvious headcount and time savings. More importantly, outsourcing has let firms transfer critical, highly experienced headcount to focus on complex issues and value-adding strategic projects, which is key. In an era of tight competition for talent, this shift is becoming even more critical today – as outsourcing helps our customers to become more attractive employers and hence stem the talent drain that the industry is experiencing.

From a risk and control perspective, we also find that the additional transparency we provide helps to put our customers in control. In an outsourced environment, metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are far more transparent, so managers tend to feel that they have their hands on the controls much more than if they were running the business in-house.

But many of the benefits tend to emerge over the medium term as outsourcing starts to impact our customers' product management and controls. The simple fact that our data delivery is entirely automated means that our customers can use our information to continually improve Straight-Through Processing (STP) rates in downstream functions – so that we impact not just our core customers but also all of the systems that support them.

Because ours is a standardized platform, our customers also benefit from our ongoing product development. Many customers who use macros and end-user computing (EUC) to process their events have major control issues when they need to update or change these tools. In contrast, our platforms have communicated roadmaps that never stop. That can mean adding new asset classes quickly or standardized integration into key systems like Aladdin.

Last but not least is the access to our expertise. In an outsourced arrangement, we manage the talent development question and ensure that our customers are always speaking to true subject-matter-experts. This is useful in core markets, but our expertise becomes invaluable as our customers look to enter new markets or new asset classes. And beyond that, our customers don't just speak to us – we make significant efforts to make sure that our customers can learn from each other in our monthly information sessions, working groups, and events. That community effect is enormously powerful and simply couldn't exist for those still struggling to manage independently.