CASE STUDY
Innovative Ideas.
Accounting and auditing problems were initially straightforward with our client. As our investment manager client grew, however, the engagement became more complex. In addition to government regulations that changed, for instance, our client’s customers also imposed restrictions in their agreements that required additional levels of compliance testing. We needed to innovate.

We opened all communication channels within the firm. Communication channels from associate to associate and from associate to client, but most importantly, from the client to us. The innovation wasn’t the communication itself, but the total communication that occurred. We make sure that all client interactions receive total communication at all times; we do our best work this way.

This total communication assures all of our financial management expertise, from tax planning to information technology, is working in concert on the client’s behalf.

Proven Practices.
This thoroughness of communication provides superior insight into our clients’ businesses and enables us to understand their day-to-day business challenges as well as the industry-specific requirements that affect them. As part of our total communication commitment, we regularly attend industry-specific education to ensure we remain up-to-date with the regulations and guidelines that govern our clients’ businesses. We applied these proven practices to ensure that we successfully navigated all of the challenges associated with investment management.

This open communication enables us to communicate effectively in both directions: to explain to our client what is required and to assist our client in developing solutions that satisfy those requirements.

Superior Solutions.
The client we’re referring to in this illustration is an investment manager, and each of the investment agreements they handle contains certain restrictions. We test their numbers annually to ensure compliance with those restrictions. We also have developed ongoing methods to convert the huge volume of data generated by their daily activities into hard, useful knowledge to more profitably run their business.

Some of the pension funds they manage, for instance, require the portfolios to be balanced over specific industries and indices. Those components change, however, and throw the portfolios out of balance because it takes time for information to move from the portfolio managers to the traders.

Our solution: Real-time review of portfolio composition that empowers the client’s audit committee to make better decisions more quickly about specific transactions. This real time analysis was only possible because we opened all communication channels both ways, to ensure everyone on our team knew the whole story.