![]() ![]() ![]() There were a couple of key goals for improving the corporate action workflow at PGGM, including improving automation, data quality, and having the back office add more value to the process. Jeroen agrees, saying that, It was a very time-consuming effort for our back office including three steps obtaining the data, recalculating based on our holdings, and then posting the actual transaction directly to the account or in case of multiple accounts, via static data and create transactions windows.” Streamlining the process With PGGM dealing with over 11,000 corporate actions a year, then the added burden on front and back office personnel was huge. Referring to the original workflow, Rene says that, It was a fairly risky process, someone could have lost an email, or an Excel spreadsheet could have been out of date, so we really needed to streamline the process and make sure we could get a proper overview.” Apart from when dealing with dividends, there was no straight through processing, and no automation to speak of. At the time of writing, PGGM manages over 20,000 asset lines. Especially as PGGM’s business expanded and the number of corporate actions grew. All in all, an extremely cumbersome and inefficient process for both their front and back offices.įor the simpler corporate actions, this may have been acceptable, but for the more complex election choices such as dividend reinvestments, share-splits or M&A, then a new setup was needed. It involved web portals, loading of portfolio’s, print screen views put into emails, double checking data on custodian websites or a Bloomberg terminal, updating of Excel spreadsheets with this information, more emails, etc. Previously, PGGM relied on a very manual, protracted, and slow system to execute their corporate action requirements.
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