In its new report, Fortune Favors the Brave – Empowering the Front Office, FIS discuses how the front office has long been viewed as the dynamic and glamorous part of a broker-dealer, dependent upon the interpersonal skills of telephone-based sales traders. Despite a reputation for being reluctant to change and adopt new technologies and concepts, there has been a recent upsurge in front-office support for innovation. The author examines the potential impacts of technology on the front office of broker dealers, the results of which are based on the views of 41 respondents working in the front offices of broker-dealers across 15 countries. The study was undertaken in July and August 2016 on behalf of FIS, by Lantern Insights.
Tech trends
Many next-generation technologies and their implementations are now being explored by the front office, including fintech start-ups, outsourcing, blockchain, cybersecurity and mobile services. Each of these areas of innovation serves to illustrate how front offices could change with adoption of the latest technologies.
Regulatory challenge
The front office is primarily responsible for generating sales and executing orders on a daily basis. Risk assessments and post-deal compliance used to be largely left to the middle and back offices, but since the financial crisis in 2008 the front office has had to play a more active role in remaining compliant with stricter regulations and preserving precious capital reserves. This emphasis on remaining compliant has become a major concern of the front office and has accelerated the introduction of new automation technologies which enable data to be shared by all of the offices more accurately and quickly.
The future of the front office The front office of the future is likely to be quite different to the one we know today. Repetitive tasks are likely to be automated in ways that give time back to expensive staff and augment analytical decision making. Electronification is expected to reshape and support existing roles within the front office, but the human touch is likely to remain critically important to selling for the foreseeable future.
