Treasury Management System

Access Bank's treasury needed one system to run its fixed income business from the first request to the day a security matures. I was a Business Analyst on the team that built its Treasury Management System.

The system covers three areas: fixed income, with treasury bills bought in the primary and secondary markets; corporate client onboarding, where clients submit their documents and information before the bank takes them on for business; and collateral management for securities pledged against loans.

Treasury bill investments passed through several systems and manual steps. Requests arrived through different channels. Customer funds had to be checked and held. Bids could only go to the central bank auction on set days and within a set window. Every successful or failed bid then had to be settled, posted and communicated to the customer. Corporate clients, meanwhile, sent their onboarding documents by email, which made them hard to track, check and keep together.

Each hand-off was a chance for delay or error, and a regulated treasury business needs tight controls: separate makers and checkers, a full audit trail, and postings that always balance.

• Mapped the full treasury bill lifecycle: primary market bids, secondary market purchases, early liquidation and maturity
• Defined how requests come in, from customers through a self-service web portal with one-time-password login, and from internal teams through bulk upload
• Specified the checks made before a request is accepted, covering balance, account status and charges, with the investment amount held on the customer's account the moment they submit
• Specified the market trigger that opens requests on auction days and closes them automatically when the window shuts
• Designed maker-checker approval queues, with comments, rejection reasons and customer notifications at every step
• Defined the postings: debits for the investment and charges, credits at liquidation and maturity, security certificates emailed automatically, and an escalation whenever postings don't balance
• Specified collateral management, placing and releasing holds on treasury bills pledged against loans so they can't be liquidated or paid out while pledged
• Defined the corporate client onboarding process, so clients submit their documentation and information in the system for the bank to review, replacing email submissions
• Wrote the functional requirements, use cases, reporting and non-functional requirements, with a manual fallback for every step that depends on an integration

• Primary market: customer and bulk requests, bid approval, auction results, and settlement of successful and failed bids
• Secondary market: purchases from the securities on offer, with availability reducing as they sell
• Liquidation: full and part liquidation at an advised rate, with returns recalculated for the customer
• Maturity: scheduled crediting of maturing bills, skipping any held as collateral
• Corporate client onboarding: clients submit their documents and information in one place for the bank to review before onboarding, with no email submissions
• Collateral management: holding and releasing treasury bills pledged against loans
• Reporting: settlement reports, customer and workflow notifications, and posting exceptions