Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo Win the Annual SimCorp North America 2018 Thunderbird Awards

Press Release

Thunderbird Awards celebrate system consolidation and automation projects

SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services to the global financial services industry, today announces the recipients of this year’s Thunderbird Awards: Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., a subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Co. The annual Thunderbird Awards ceremony took place as part of the 2018 North American User Summit (NAUS), held in Miami, Florida, where Fannie Mae and Well Fargo Bank, N.A. were recognized for the positive change they drive through the innovative use of technology.

Fannie Mae recognized for the consolidation of debt and derivatives accounting with securities accounting

This year, Fannie Mae was recognized for its ongoing commitment to system consolidation and automation. In the most recent phase of the firm’s adoption of SimCorp Dimension, Fannie Mae consolidated the accounting for its debt and derivatives book of business, with its securities accounting for other asset classes such as mortgage back securities. With this consolidation, Fannie Mae was able to retire several legacy systems, automate tax accounting and cross-train the entire accounting organization on one core platform, ultimately allowing the entire team to work from a single book of record for all investment products.  

During the Thunderbird winners’ circle discussion, Fannie Mae noted that deploying the right engagement model, along with the expertise and mindset of team members, was a significant factor in the project’s success. Additionally, the standardized product-by-product approach, the start of testing during the implementation sprints, and the use of SimCorp’s standardized configuration, allowed the project team to deliver shorter time-to-value for business users.

Wells Fargo recognized for substantial savings in automating and optimizing collateral processing

Wells Fargo, the third largest financial services company in the United States by assets, received the Thunderbird award in recognition for automation and optimization of its collateral management processing. Before the automation, the Wells Fargo team was manually processing a continually increasing number of daily collateral requests from across the firm. With a small team doing the work manually, it was hard to scale and support growing demands from the business. With the deployment of SimCorp’s collateral management solution, Wells Fargo can now automate collateral allocation and substitution, providing them with the controls needed to eliminate under-collateralization and, very importantly, minimize over-collateralization, resulting in hard Dollar savings. By minimizing the amount of bonds used for collateralization, it increases liquidity and minimizes the amount of debt Wells Fargo must issue.  For every dollar of debt that does not have to be borrowed, interest costs are avoided in the current year and each year thereafter. 

Wells Fargo also reported that efficiency gains freed up team members from daily manual tasks and allowed them to focus on more value-add, analytical activities.

"Now more than ever, our clients, including banks, Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), asset managers, insurance companies and state pension plans are managing complexity and reducing inefficiency in the front, middle and back offices through consolidation and automation,” said James Corrigan, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of SimCorp North America. "Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae are outstanding examples and their successes serve as a model to the industry. It is an honor to recognize and congratulate these two firms as the 2018 SimCorp Thunderbirds.”

Enquiries regarding this announcement should be addressed to:
Mittal Shah, SimCorp PR UK/North America +44 207 397 8072 mittal.shah@simcorp.com
Anders Crillesen, SimCorp Corporate Communications +45 3544 6474 anders.crillesen@simcorp.com

About SimCorp
SimCorp provides integrated, best-in-class investment management solutions to the world’s leading asset managers, fund managers, asset servicers, pension and insurance funds, wealth managers and sovereign wealth funds. Whether deployed on premise or as an ASP solution, its core system, SimCorp Dimension, supports the entire investment value chain and range of instruments, all based on a market-leading IBOR. SimCorp invests more than 20% of its annual revenue in R&D, helping clients develop their business and stay ahead of ever-changing industry demands. Listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen, SimCorp is a global company, regionally covering all of Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.simcorp.com