556: Preparing Your Organization for Change | Amy Shelly, CFO, The OCC

CFOTL: What are the numbers or metrics that are always top of mind for you? 

Shelly: Ninety-five percent of our revenue is driven by the volume that we clear, settle, and risk-manage every day, which is something that we don't control. We charge a clearing fee for our services, and as a low-cost service provider, I can't just charge any old amount. I'm very cognizant of how much volume we clear every day because our budget is based on an average daily volume rate. I'm also very cognizant of expenses. I'm okay with spending money, but I want to do it in a smart way. Last year, we began what we call our Renaissance initiative. It's a multiyear, multimillion-dollar program through which we are replacing our core technologies. The system that clears, settles, and risk-manages those positions every single day is about 20 years old, so we are looking to create a more modular, more agile system whereby we can increase our processing, we can better utilize the data that we receive every single day, and we can expand upon the risk management services that we provide. Right now, it's currently being done on premises on a couple of mainframes. We'll be looking to move all of that processing up into the cloud so that as our volume increases, we can expand and manage it without an issue. Now, don't get me wrong: The mainframes that we currently have can process an exorbitant amount of volume. In 2019, I think that we had a few days where we cleared and settled over somewhere between 30 and 35 million contracts. In 2020, we are clearing and settling, on average, probably about 19.5 million contracts every single day, and the system works just fine. It's just very cumbersome to make changes to it, and that's another part of the reason for the drive to make a change.