BASIS POINT GROUP CREATES FIRST COMPREHENSIVE SINGLE INDEX MEASUREMENT SCALE FOR FIRM-LEVEL OPERATIONS PERFORMANCE

Basis Point Group introduces the OPERA® Operations Performance Benchmark Scale, the first quantitative, single index scale for financial service and investment firms to measure, analyze and manage performance in their internal operations. This groundbreaking capability was unveiled before a select group of invited guests at meeting held by one of the largest global financial service vendors on October 25, 2007. The OPERA® Performance Scale is the culmination of three years of research to create a practical measurement and comparison capability for operational performance.

“The OPERA® methodology simultaneously measures processing quality and Unrealized Risk®”, said Fred Sommers, a Basis Point Group partner whose background and experience was key to the creation of the measurement approach.

Utilizing eleven years of historic data, covering millions of financial events from more than 25 equity and fixed income securities market participants, in its proprietary patent-pending OPERA® decision framework, BPG has identified three distinct, quantifiable performance bands in which all firms’ processes operate.

“Analyzing our extensive historic operational event database, BPG was able to identify performance boundaries that provide management and clients a meaningful basis for understanding operational quality, despite the complex challenges and variations that securities operations present,” Sommers added.

The OPERA® Performance Benchmark Scale allows direct performance comparison of all cash and securities transaction streams within a firm. OPERA®‘s Attribution capabilities isolates process components that pose quantifiable quality and monetary risk, identifying all event that impact performance, providing focused, actionable information to reduce process volatility and improve quality.

“The OPERA® methodology provides the only single-value, index based approach to operations performance measurement. Our unique approach normalizes the effects of size, style, organization and automation infrastructure, while retaining the capability to fully attribute performance,” said Graham Mellor, BPG’s lead partner in London. “Financial service firms will recognize significant improvements in their ability to cut through operational data clutter to precisely target measurable improvements while leveraging past risk, performance and regulatory investments.”