PROJECT: Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Engagement

CLIENT: Large ETF Financial Services Company

OVERVIEW:

Convergent completed full Sarbanes-Oxley compliance services.

• Identified the significant accounts and disclosures within the financial statements
• For all significant accounts we identified the relevant financial statement assertions
• Identified the major transactions affecting the significant accounts
• Documented the business processes for the major transaction types identified highlighting key control activities within each process
• Gained an understanding, documented and assessed the entity level control environment
• Performed an overall risk assessment and completed associated risk control matrices
• Designed an audit program and executed the associated test plan based on our risk assessments in the risk and control matrices
• Evaluated controls for design gaps and assessed the impact of any deficiencies noted
• Worked with external audit team to answer their questions and ensure they were able to render their opinion

PROJECT: Creation of Accounting Risk and Control Function

CLIENT: Global Financial Services Firm

OVERVIEW:

Convergent Consulting Group was retained to implement an accounting-focused risk and control process to ensure a well-controlled and managed corporate accounting unit before and after merger and acquisition activities.

• Evaluated internal control deficiencies noted in internal and external audit reviews
• Prioritized audit findings by risk to organization
• Collaborated with client to initiate a plan to close findings and enhance controls
• Installed monitoring processes across accounting organization to escalate and rate potential control risks
• Created centralized risk and control database to track and measure risk findings, score risk, detail workplans to address findings and close out documentation
• Centralized risk and control reporting to facilitate executive visibility into risk metrics across Corporate Accounting and enable executive level prioritization

PROJECT: Business Subject Area Modeling

CLIENT: Global Private Equity Firm

OVERVIEW:

Convergent was retained to model and define key business concepts to support the creation of a master data management framework that governed the client’s enterprise data warehouse.

• Developing a hierarchical model of key business terms and related subject areas which facilitated relational data rules adopted and governed by the client’s Data Steward Council
• Utilizing mind mapping techniques that matched key business processes and related systems of record to each of the business subject areas and related data terms
• Identified and defined key business processes that consumed, transformed and conveyed data across the enterprise to facilitate master data management across the data consumption chain
• Creating a glossary of business terms, inclusive of business subject areas, related business term definitions, lists of valid values and data quality rules adopted and monitored by the client’s Data Steward Council (the glossary of business terms was published to the company as a data consumption guideline)

PROJECT: Merger and Acquisition Business Process Integration

CLIENT: Global Financial Services Firm

OVERVIEW:

Convergent provided highly skilled, financial services baseline accounting support to enhance operational accounting activities and enable strategic deployment of employee resources to focus on process transformation in advance of merger and acquisition activities.

• Updated documentation of operational accounting process
• Implemented new accounting controls to support expanding operations
• Created training materials to address expanding business processes
• Unified existing and new processes to create streamlined business process leveraging existing controls and resources

PROJECT: Creation of Business Process to Enable Performance Reporting

CLIENT: Global Private Equity Firm

OVERVIEW:

Convergent created the business process, data structure and management and analytical reporting to produce quarterly SEC compliant disclosures in advance of client’s IPO.

Assessed the client’s desired disclosures and created a flexible data structure to enable dynamic changes of reported results

• Created unified management, analytical and statutory reporting suite that delivers financial outcomes across multiple business segments
• Instituted a standardized business process to capture data across multiple business segments where data is both manually and programmatically produced
• Installed point-of-data delivery validations to enable business validation of data inputs occurs prior to consumption in process to produce performance measures
• Standardized business validation of financial outcomes to enable efficient review by client and client’s auditors
• Performance reporting process, data structure and reporting suites served as a working prototype from which a customized software platform was developed

PROJECT: Software Quality Assurance Acceptance Testing

CLIENT: Global Financial Services Firm

OVERVIEW:

Convergent developed the integrated user acceptance testing approach during the installation and rollout of a derivative trading platform with functionalities that included trade-settlement, accounting and statutory compliance and, reporting and analytics.  Our integrated testing approach:

• Created an integrated test plan spanning multiple software modules, used by sixteen cross-functional teams (front, middle and back offices)
• Defined the testing phases and timelines aligned with software development timelines managed under an Agile development approach
• Developed quality assurance thresholds ensuring software capabilities achieved user requirements
• Initiated the framework for defect resolution and retesting of updated software code and service level agreements
• Executed, tracked and monitored concurrent integrated testing cycles
• Developed a preventative quality assurance initiative adopted by the client to incorporate peer review and testing methodology walkthrough practices in advance of test execution

PROJECT: Implementation of Customized Accounting Software

CLIENT: Large Mortgage Finance Company

OVERVIEW:

Convergent served as business lead during the implementation of a customized accounting software application used to perform a restatement of a multi-trillion dollar loan and security portfolio.

• Delivered lead business analysts to evaluate appropriate application of accounting standard
• Authored accounting policies and crafted business requirements to comply with complex accounting standards
• Conceived analytical and management reports ensuring valid accounting outcomes
• Evaluated required data elements housed in corporate data warehouse to be consumed by new accounting model
• Instituted data interrogation rules ensuring valid, model-ready input variables into software application
• Delivered on client’s corporate vision to create a data profiling and reporting tool enabling identification of data anomalies sourced to various accounting applications