Financial & Regulatory Reporting at Bank of China UK

Founded in 1912 to replace the former Imperial banking system, Bank of China is the oldest remaining bank in mainland China and is headquartered in the Xicheng district of Beijing. As of Dec 2009 it was listed as the fifth largest bank worldwide based on market capitalisation value.

In 1929 Bank of China setup an office which was originally named “Bank of China London Agency”, the first overseas financial institution formed by any Chinese bank. In 2007 the UK FSA approved Bank of China to formally establish Bank of China (UK) as a UK subsidiary.

Bank of China (UK) provides retail and commercial services to the whole of the UK and aims to encourage Sino-British cooperation in trade, investment and technology.

In order to improve efficiencies and standardisation Bank of China UK’s head office planned to roll out a set of standardised technology solutions to all of its overseas branches and subsidiaries.

These new solutions were designed to make front office processes easier and to make all core processes very similar in every country. As a consequence the provision for regulatory and management reporting requirements specific to each individual territory was limited. It was known to Bank of China UK that a number of other overseas banks had recently implemented similar systems and then been unable to meet the reporting requirements of the banking regulator; they had then received significant fines. This was not a risk that Bank of China UK wished to take.

Bank of China UK therefore needed to be able to implement these new solutions whilst still maintaining their ability to deliver against the UK regulatory requirements from the Bank of England and the FSA as well as to minimise the changes and impact to their existing internal management and financial reporting.

Through partnering with Red Olive, Bank of China UK have been able to deploy their new international solution without impacting either their external regulatory reporting or internal management reporting requirements, consequently minimising the impact these new solutions have had on the business.

Red Olive were able to work with Bank of China UK staff in order to design and then implement an Information Management layer which gathers data from their new front office solutions and consolidates this to meet their pre-existing reporting needs.

This allowed Bank of China UK to seamlessly continue delivering their existing reporting needs, both regulatory and internal. A further benefit has been that the new reporting solution was designed to provide a robust foundation for subsequent expansion and to respond more flexibly to future information needs.

Whilst Bank of China UK had a requirement to continue to produce their existing regulatory and internal management and financial reporting, when working with Red Olive they quickly recognised that our methodology was to not only achieve this, but to improve upon it.

In partnering with Bank of China UK, Red Olive undertook to deliver the following services:

• Map the information required from the new global system in order to keep the existing regulatory reporting solution working.
• Understand the existing and possible future internal management and financial reporting requirements.
• Recommend a technology solution suitable for the organisation to achieve these requirements (In this case an ETL tool).
• Design and deliver the new Information Management layer using the selected tool.

We applied our proprietary Data Warehouse agile delivery methodology in order to capture and prioritise the requirements that the bank had. We then demonstrated how these could be delivered in a flexible layer which would not only meet the existing reporting requirements, but also support future needs.

In addition to this we carried out a technology evaluation with the bank’s staff in order to help them select an ETL tool with which the proposed solution could be delivered.

Finally we worked with the bank to implement the ETL tool chosen and to deliver the Information Management layer and initial reporting requirements.

Red Olive is a London-based consultancy delivering work throughout mainland Europe and the UK. Set up to help businesses extract value from the data they hold by making information accessible and understandable, Red Olive’s approach is based on data being instrumental to a business strategy rather than confined to technology implementations.

Red Olive specialises in Analytics and Data Management. Our services include advising on and implementing information and data strategy, predictive modelling, delivering Big Data platforms and data warehouses.

Information is made accessible throughout a client’s organisation so that knowledge can be shared in a variety of ways including dashboards, reports and advanced visualisations.

The team at Red Olive has experience of working with companies in many sectors including Unilever, Telegraph Media Group, Bank of China UK, Centrica Energy, Home Retail Group, Thames Water, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and the NHS.

Red Olive has a number of vendor and technology partners and looks to provide the best advice for each of its clients.