A trade may take seconds to execute, but making sure it completes properly is a different matter.
Cash and securities must reach the right place, and records held by several organisations must agree. Funding, client assets, and reporting obligations all have to be handled correctly – often under tight deadlines.
Chris Holmes is Head of Operations at Global Investment Strategy UK Limited. He has spent more than 20 years in investment banking and brokerage, with responsibility spanning settlement, CASS oversight, transaction reporting and liquidity management.
We asked Chris what happens after a trade, why the unglamorous controls matter and how the UK market’s move to T+1 will change the working day.
What first attracted you to financial-market operations?
I studied Economic and Social History at university, so I already had an interest in banking. After graduating, I came back to London and started working in the City. It quickly became clear that my strengths aligned more with back-office functions, and that’s where my career developed.
How would you explain your role and what happens after a trade?
I make sure trades settle, money and stock are where they should be, and the firm runs smoothly day to day. One of my primary responsibilities is identifying operational risks before they become issues and proactively finding practical solutions to mitigate them. If something can go wrong operationally, it’s my job to stop it.
After execution, a transaction may pass between our trading team, brokers, banks, settlement agents, liquidity providers and other counterparties. The details must match, the assets must be available, and exceptions must be addressed. Settlement is not just administration; it involves real money, real assets and real risk.
The best outcome is that the client never has to think about any of it.
Why do reconciliations matter so much?
Reconciliations form the bedrock of back-office operations. They provide assurance that account balances, cash positions and asset holdings are accurate and complete. Any reconciling items or discrepancies must be identified, investigated and resolved immediately before they develop into larger operational issues.
We compare our records with those held by banks, custodians, settlement agents and counterparties to ensure everything matches. It may sound routine, but effective reconciliation is one of the most important controls in the business, helping to protect client assets, maintain accurate records and identify potential risks at an early stage.
Good reconciliation processes give management confidence that cash, securities and transactions are exactly where they should be. When done properly, most issues are identified and resolved long before they ever affect a client.
The UK is due to move to T+1 settlement in October 2027. What changes in practice?
The standard settlement period will fall from two business days after the trade to one business day. That shortens the time counterparties remain exposed, but it also removes much of the breathing room from the post-trade process.
Allocations, confirmations, settlement instructions, and funding will all need to occur earlier because, under T+1, a delay that can be fixed tomorrow may already result in a failed settlement. This cannot sit with the settlement team alone; investment managers, brokers, banks, custodians, and clients all provide information or assets at some point in the chain.
Firms need to improve instruction quality and test with counterparties well before the change goes live.
Where does automation help and where can it create false confidence?
Straight-through processing is valuable when it removes repetitive work and gives people more time to investigate genuine exceptions. But automating a poor process does not make it a good one. It can simply make the same weakness run faster.
You need to understand the process first: who owns it, what the control is and what happens when the normal flow breaks.
At GIS, clients are sometimes surprised by how much of our operational setup has been built in-house. A bespoke back-office platform lets us shape workflows and reporting around the business, rather than bend the business around a third-party system. The technology is there to support the operating model.
What does operational resilience mean beyond having back-up systems?
It means knowing which services really matter, how long they can be disrupted and what has to happen to restore them.
Technology is only one part: people, data, communications, counterparties and outside providers are all dependencies. Outsourcing a function does not outsource responsibility for the outcome. You have to understand those links and test the plan; otherwise you may discover during an incident that it rested on assumptions that were never true.
How does CASS oversight support client confidence?
It comes down to knowing that client money and custody assets are properly held, recorded, and protected. That means accurate books and records, appropriate segregation and regular oversight.
Clients may not see those checks, but they feel the result. In this industry, trust is built through consistency; doing things properly every day and being open when something needs fixing.
What misconception about operations would you most like to correct?
That’s an easy one – that it is just administration, because good operations reduce risk and cost in very real ways.
I would also challenge the idea that complexity equals sophistication. Often the better process is the simpler one: fewer unnecessary steps, clear ownership and quick action when something goes wrong.
That is one of the things I value at GIS – we are practical and focused. Problems are dealt with quickly, and there is a genuine willingness to improve a process rather than work around it. Clients get experienced controls without the slow decision-making that can come with a much larger organisation.
What does a well-run operations function look like?
It supports trading rather than getting in the way. Clients get clear communication, quick answers and confidence that the basics have been done properly.
Good operations don’t draw attention to themselves; they just work.