The Challenge
Our client is a global bulge bracket investment bank and we support their equity research teams across multiple geographies. With increased pressure to reduce time to market, equity research teams get stretched to update their financial models quickly, especially during peak earnings season, when multiple companies report on the same day. Analyst teams needed a solution to update their models faster – but without compromising on data accuracy.
- Faster turnaround time without compromising the quality
- Deal with peaks in workflow caused by multiple covered companies reporting around the same time
- Improve time to market and expand company coverage
Our Solution
Our patented Automated Model Update Solution is a platform that extracts relevant data from financial statements to Excel, and automates the process of importing data from companies’ financial statements to analyst’s financial models, keeping the structure and format of the model intact. The software can pull financial data from filings in any format – PDF, Excel, JPEG and even scans of paper documents. With no manual data input involved, errors are far less likely. The tool also flags any changes in reporting structure compared to the previous period, alerting the analyst to any new or non-reported line items. Average turnaround time for any financial model update using our Automated Model Update Solution is around 10-30 min based on the complexity of the model. Efficiency gains are much higher for complex sectors like metal & mining and pharma (80%) as compared to simple sectors like retail (30%). In preparation for earnings season, we set up our platform to extract the required financials for the client’s covered companies. We also customized the solution to the client’s unique models, so they could stay exactly as they were. As soon as the financials are published, the analyst can simply transfer them to the target cells within the model with one click. The tool provides flexibility and freedom to analyst to incorporate the changes in the model based on their own discretion.
Business Impact
Following the bank’s adoption of our Automated Model Update Solution, the time spent on updating financial models has been reduced dramatically. Research associates were able to save approximately 40-70% time on model updates. Those time savings helped analyst teams to focus on other earnings-related tasks and improve time to market. Meanwhile, the multiple checks ensure the accuracy of model data. In fact, eliminating manual errors has seen accuracy soar to 99.6%.