About the Client

Empowering Investor Success 

What started as an idea to equip people with the necessary information to make sound investment decisions quickly grew into a global business. With an eye toward technological advancement, this global financial services firm seeks to understand how to best arm clients with information to empower investor success, and that often means investing in new technological tools, analytics, and the power of BI to do so.

The Situation

Understanding What New Technologies Can be Leveraged to Enhance Investor Offerings

Investor success hinges on the availability of real-time information to make sound decisions at a moment’s notice. Key to providing investors with the information they need at their fingertips is using the right technologies and delivery methods to set them up for success. 

As the leading investment research provider, this global financial services company aims to maintain its pulse on the latest technological advancements. Doing so enables it to provide fast and comprehensive surveillance of existing ratings and markets to the entire spectrum of the fixed-income investment community. 

This community ranges from the issuer seeking ratings to the advisor selecting the most suitable fixed-income instruments for a client’s portfolio to the individual investor curious about bonds. Seeking to continue delivering value to its client base, the company decided to expand the use of an analytical tool implemented in Python for its North America commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) transactions. 

But understanding how to expand the use of the analytical tool requires financial modeling expertise to understand how to best implement it to extract the necessary information. The company wanted to complete this project in eight weeks, so hiring a full-time employee or moving resources from other departments to work on this initiative was out of the question.

The Solution

Retaining Independent Talent 

Having worked with Graphite on a prior engagement, the company connected with its Account Executive (AE) to see if they could leverage an independent financial modeling expert they’ve worked with before for this project. One of the main reasons why the company was so interested in retaining the expert was because of their background. 

The independent consultant had extensive experience in sophisticated financial modeling, equity valuation, and fundamental investment analysis from their time at hedge funds, asset managers, and McKinsey. 

As a master of many trades, this independent consultant had a J.D., CFA, and extensive programming experience, making them an invaluable asset to the team. Understanding the company’s motivation for this approach, the AE quickly reached out to the expert through the platform’s in-app messaging features to discuss availability and next steps. 

Because the company had already worked with the expert, onboarding them to the new project was quick and seamless. All that was required to start the work was an updated scope of work and a meeting with the new project manager. 

The Results

Setting a New Standard

After discussing the scope of work with the new project manager, the independent expert set out to understand the analytical tool and what the company was trying to achieve by expanding its use. 

With the project's goals in place, the independent expert used their expertise to adapt the analytical tool to handle standardized scenario analysis for commercial real estate collateralized loan obligation (CRE CLO) transactions under surveillance. They also adapted the tool’s portfolio-mode capabilities for CRE CLO transactions under surveillance.

As the project scope evolved, the financial services firm has since expanded its engagement with the independent expert twice. When asked about their experience with Graphite and the expert, the company said, "[The expert] did a great job. [They] cross-trained my team on how to take over [their] current responsibilities. I [have also] recommended [the expert] elsewhere in the company."

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