- Article
- Managing Cash Flow
- Improve Efficiency
Seamless Virtual Account solution created in close collaboration
Liberum is a specialist provider of financial services for investment funds, professional advisers, intermediaries and private clients. Combining user-friendly and proven institutional technology with extensive personal experience, Liberum offer global market access and diverse investment solutions via the convenience of a single account.
Liberum were looking to enhance the proposition provided to their customers by leveraging Virtual Accounts. Upon review of the market for Virtual Account providers, HSBC was the obvious partner of choice.
Service Enhancement
Many of Liberum’s existing clients requested to use their custody account to make payments quickly and conveniently. Due to the typical structure of Liberum’s custody accounts, executing payments required a significant amount of manual intervention for payments management, compliance and reconciliation, which was not easily scalable. Liberum needed to build a solution that gave their clients the ease and convenience of enabling them to make payments using their custody account.
Our goal was to create a seamless solution that brings together global custody, trade execution, payments, and treasury services through a single account. Achieving this required the integration of multiple complex systems into a streamlined, intuitive platform - designed to deliver secure, efficient, and connected services. In close collaboration with HSBC’s Global Payments Solutions team, we developed a purpose-built system for managing client funds, which was configured, tested, and launched in under 12 months. This success was driven by the deep expertise and collaborative spirit of both the HSBC and Liberum teams.
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Virtual Accounts and Granite
HSBC have implemented five Virtual Account structures for Liberum in GBP, USD, EUR, CHF and AED, integrated via a host-to-host solution HSBC Connect. Each Virtual Account forms part of a segregated client money trust account maintained by Liberum at HSBC. This ensures that Liberum’s clients’ money is always kept segregated and protected as one Virtual Account is assigned to each individual client.
Liberum have taken full advantage of HSBC’s reconciliation capabilities by grouping a number of Virtual Accounts and adopting aggregated positions for internal reporting. Liberum are also utilising the funds check feature for each Virtual Account, ensuring visibility of real-time balances prior to sending payment instructions.
Through working with HSBC’s Global Payments Solutions team, and leveraging the Virtual Account Management platform, Liberum built a unique software solution called Granite. Granite is a front, middle and back-office system that handles clients’ accounts, payments management, compliance, payments transmission, payment beneficiary management, authorised person management, and account reconciliation. Liberum also built Granite with a secure client portal for viewing account balances, investment holdings and transactions, downloading statements, as well as inputting payment instructions for same day or future dated value.
By partnering with HSBC, Liberum created an interface between HSBC’s Virtual Account Management platform and Granite to reconcile account balances and transaction records and submit payments across major payment types in ISO 20022 format.
The Success
- Number of physical accounts reduced
- Reduced costs
- Increased automation and process efficiencies
- Reduced manual intervention
- Scalable and future-proof solution
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