Finance & Middle Office Automation Programme

A global high-frequency trading and market-making firm was running its finance and middle office functions with heavily manual processes. Month-end close took five days, daily P&L production consumed six hours of staff time, and quarterly BAS reporting absorbed another five days - leaving the team of seven with limited capacity for analysis or control work.

I led a systematic automation programme across the function, using Python, VBA, and QlikView to redesign and automate each major process. Month-end close was reduced from five days to two. Daily P&L production fell from six hours to one. BAS reporting dropped from five days per quarter to half a day. A daily management report was designed and automated from scratch - pulling front office P&L, balance sheet, cost data, market KPIs, and operational incident reports into a single self-updating online view.

The result was a step-change in efficiency: the same functions were managed with a team of five rather than seven, quality improved, and the finance team's focus shifted from data production to insight. Junior team members were mentored through the programme, embedding automation capability as a lasting part of the team's culture.