The steps we took in 2019 to further enhance our operations and manage risk have recently been put to the test, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world and rocked financial markets.
As major cities shut down and millions of workers were told to stay home, we relied on decades of detailed business continuity planning and the dedication of our employees to manage split operations, swap workloads and move to alternate sites. We continued our business, delivering services with minimal disruption while the widely unanticipated global disaster unfolded.
By placing a high priority on operational and technology resilience throughout the year, we proved well equipped to respond quickly to rapidly changing business conditions caused by the pandemic. As one of about 30 institutions deemed critical to the systemic operations of the world’s financial markets, we believe the biggest risks in the financial industry today no longer surround capital or liquidity, but rather the impact that shifting technologies, operational complexity and disruptive threats will have on continued operations.
Our Global Risk team is an essential partner across State Street’s many business lines. It works closely with our business continuity, disaster recovery and corporate information security teams to monitor and remediate emerging threats.
These functions were invaluable as we began to transform our operating model and the way we delivered our services in 2019, building out our global operational footprint so that we could provide continuous coverage from service centers in different time zones around the world. With up to US$1 trillion running through our systems daily, this capability proved critical during the pandemic, as we transitioned certain activities to different locations to ensure continuity in service.
Effective collaboration and technology innovation came together to help us create a simpler, more effective fund accounting operation aimed at improving the NAV calculation process, eventually moving toward end-to-end automation that will incorporate the type of value that only our people can add. As we strive toward continuous improvement, we introduced more technology across our securities servicing function, automating various production tasks in an effort to improve data consistency, delivery speed and productivity on a global scale. Over the course of 2019, we were able to increase straight-through processing rates, thereby freeing employee resources to focus on value-added projects such as oversight, control and consulting with clients.
But technology enhancements and operational efficiencies cannot be effective if we become too far removed from our clients. As a result, we more tightly aligned employees from the client relationship side of the business together with our global operational teams to facilitate collaboration needed to expedite answers to client questions and get service issues resolved quickly and accurately. Understanding our clients’ longer-term objectives and preferences is key to better outcomes.
We entered 2020 as a more efficient organization prepared to deliver operational excellence to our clients and more opportunities to our employees. The COVID-19 pandemic may have shifted expectations about exactly how that would unfold, but it has strengthened the mutual trust we share with our clients as we work together to keep the world’s financial systems operating.