About 30 per cent of private banks in Switzerland, US and UK lack back office automation, according to research on their transaction processing practices undertaken by wealth management consultancy Scorpio Partnership and commissioned by Omgeo, a provider of post trade management services. The research suggests that nearly a third of private banks continue to manually operate trade execution, confirmation and affirmation, rather than processing trades electronically. Many of the rest still use manual processes for some types of transaction. In addition, only 39 per cent of participating private banks had a post-trade/pre-settlement trade matching process in place. The remainder rely, in the main, on settlement matching procedures. This means that a significant number of private banks are lacking basic automation in the post-trade/pre-settlement trade matching process and exposing themselves to unnecessary operational costs and risks. The research shows that this lack of automation is at its worst in Europe, with only 38 per cent of Swiss participants and 22 per cent of UK participants having a post-trade/pre-settlement matching process in place. Catherine Tillotson, partner and head of research at Scorpio said: “We believe the client market is ripe for end-to-end straight through processing, particularly in the post trade/pre-settlement space where large cost savings and operational risk reduction can be achieved through automation. The majority of private client transactions tend to be high volume, small sized and uncomplicated. This style of trading is well suited to the implementation of electronic trade processing.” The other main findings of the research are the identification of the key transaction processing concerns of private banks such as fund transactions, cross border trades (especially for Swiss banks) and exotic instruments. Omgeo is a joint venture of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation and Thomson Financial.