About Us

3C Advisory helps clients deal with the challenges in the post trade world of banking & finance. The “How can we make the plumbing work more effectively, cheaper, easier” of life.

Expertise in Financial Services

At its heart, financial services businesses are a business like any other. 3C Advisory was established to help clients in the financial services business deal with the three disciplines that form the holy trinity in operating infrastructure in that market place: Control, Capacity & Cost. They need to be viewed as a whole that needs all three components to be in balance. 3C Advisory is a passionate advocate of building great infrastructure and focussing on these discipline to help clients find that balance.

Recent Client Assignments
Nordea
Group Functions at Nordea. designing & implementing data quality assurance to ensure control over key data & reports; G-SIB, Large Exposure, Basel. Built on Hadoop / Big Data and using IBM IGC.
Nomura
Intraday Liquidity Management / Cash Management: extensive work on optimisation of Intraday Liquidity Cost optimisation to meet BCBS 248 requirements for Nomura , process rationalisation, Nostro Network optimisation. Latest project will achieve annual cost savings of $20mm+ in reduced liquidity buffer costs.
First Rand
Worked with leading South African bank First Rand, on a project to join CLS for FX settlement and to improve both client offering and associated processing in FX and payment products. Value Delivered: Implemented in 13 vs. expected 18+ months.
Sberbank
Helped Sberbank with business case for joining CLS for FX settlement and initial project set-up and also served as subject matter expert for project to relocate capital markets business into Switzerland. Advice on local operational tax issues; stamp duty and withholding tax. Value Delivered: Exec Board approval received.
Luxoft
Worked with leading ITO vendor Luxoft on their BPO offering in reference data space. Focus on the needs around Legal Entity Identifiers with their hierarchies and how to propagate this single standard and source throughout the organization.
State Street
Business project management for State Street’s derivative clearing programme. Interest rate, CDS index and FX clearing for Dodd-Frank / EMIR related change.
IBM Global Business Services
Worked with IBM Global Business Services on a proposal for the next evolution of post-trade processing in FX & payments. Aim was to reduce operating costs and liquidity overhead through more centralised front-to-back process.
Nomura International
Consultant to Nomura International (Aug ’09 to Oct ’12). Programme manager for OTC to CCP Clearing in FX and for FX Prime Brokerage. Included all Dodd-Frank (DFA) and EMIR driven work. Led the Global CLS project. Helped Nomura become a CLS Shareholder and Settlement Member. Representing Nomura in FX industry work for the GFXD, the Global Foreign Exchange Division, to design a model for FX Option clearing. Value Delivered: Implemented strategic infrastructure to accommodate business ambition to be in top 5 players in 11 vs. expected 18 months. Drove a parallel change in Treasury to consolidate the Nostro network of banking relationships for the entire group and simplified interbank FX trading footprint and all inter-company settlement. Helped client minimise liquidity buffer needs, reducing requirements by over $5B and reduce costs by $20mm p.a.
Fenergo
Advised a European software house, Fenergo, active in Client On-Boarding. Defined a strawman of how this function is set-up & tested with a number of houses. Results offer client insight into key pinch points & development opportunities. How to extend & integrate standard procedure provided by external compliance experts as a software-as-a-service offering for SME shops. Application covers initial on-boarding, KYC / AML FATCA, as well as enhanced due and on-going due diligence. Worked with client on a partnership with a major bank to offer a white-labelled margin-lending product.
Our Team
3C Advisory works with great subject matter experts from across the world. No big organisation, no big overhead to feed, just the flexibility to identify the right solution for each client challenge. Please feel free to contact anybody in the network directly or via us.

Olaf Ransome

Founder

“The Bankers’ Plumber. I help banks and FinTechs master their processing; optimising control, capacity and cost.”
If it exists and is not working, I analyse it, design optimised processes and guide the work to get to optimal. If there is a new product or business, I work to identify the target operating model and design the business architecture to deliver those optimal processes and the customer experience.

I am an expert-generalist in FS matters. I understand the full front-to-back and end-to-end impact of what we do in banks. That allows me to build the best processes for our clients; ones that deliver on the three key dimensions of Operations: control, capacity and cost.

Career Highlights:
Old tricks for new dogs: Those “old” skills are now applicable in the FinTech space; ensuring that new offerings have robust processes under the hood. I am an advisor to two Fintech start-ups; ICON Capital Reserve and Sonect.

Group Functions:
Designing & implementing data quality assurance to ensure control over key data. Built on Hadoop / Big Data and using IBM IGC.

Intraday Liquidity Management / Cash Management:
Extensive work on optimisation of Intraday Liquidity Cost optimisation to meet BCBS 248 requirements, process rationalisation, Nostro Network optimisation. Latest project will achieve annual cost savings of $20mm+ in reduced liquidity buffer costs.

CLS participation:
Led global projects for three banks to join CLS for FX settlement. Included software selection, process re-engineering, testing and Network Management overhaul.

Transaction Banking:
Responsible for product development and support for Credit Suisse’s transaction business: Payments, Custody & CLS.

Our Associate Network

Ian Keates

Senior Leader

A senior leader with experience across global regions, decision-making guided by integrity and strong personal ethics, able to gain personal support at all levels of an organisation in order to create a culture for success. Proven ability to lead large-scale initiatives and to drive business growth via process, organisation, and technology redesign. Management professional with a strong business and technology background in the global financial markets environment.

Mark Bolton

Program Manager and Senior Project Manager

Mark is an ideal person for leading a programme of work. A Program Manager and Senior Project Manager with 25+ years banking experience building and deploying critical front-office business systems. Most recently Mark has been working on Regulatory Business Change in Banking (EMIR, MIFID, AML, FATCA, CRS). He has a broad range of product knowhow, is strongly entrepreneurial and deeply experienced in new business development projects. Mark has the strength of character that allows him to develop strong working relationships in the front-office.

Rainer Kaufmann

Capital Market

Rainer has an extensive understanding of and experience in how to process front-to-back Capital Market products. He has identified many cost, quality and risk items in the Capital Market world and regularly took the initiative to significantly reduce the impact of those items through practical and creative solutions. As a strong believer of “if you don’t measure it, you cannot manage it”, he has initiated and directed the development of two sizable low-maintenance data warehouses that led to significant business value, business intelligence and actionable intelligence. Having worked on both the buy-side and the sell-side of financial products he is also very familiar with booking models, service level agreements and management accounting. The roles he has covered so far are: Process Manager, Process Engineer, Product Manager, Business Manager, Risk Manager, Project Manager, Programme Manager.

Iain Wilcox

Software and Services Sector

Iain’s specialties are new business sales & marketing focused on software and services sector. Experienced in strategy formulation, new market entry and business development, in particular focused on financial services (Retail & Investment Banking) and technologies including Risk & Compliance, BPM and Workflow. Manages the delicate balance between strategy planning and the practical implementation of market entry and revenue delivery (geographic or vertical sector) for new or established operations.

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