Duco’s growth accelerates during coronavirus-induced recession as operational risk and cost focus returns

Duco, the global provider of self-service data integrity and reconciliation services, announced it had seen a rapid increase in new business since the coronavirus-induced lockdowns in March this year. 

In the quarter from April to June, the company agreed new enterprise wide-deployments worth a combined £6m with asset managers, banks and insurance companies. The increase is triggered by financial institutions needing to improve operational resilience, control cost and reduce risk in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. 

Christian Nentwich, CEO of Duco, said “The pandemic has shone a harsh light on operational data tasks reliant on manual work, legacy technology and on-premise installations. At Duco we’ve always believed that financial services institutions need access to agile, scalable solutions in the cloud, to deal quickly with a fast-changing business environment. The increased demand for our data services shows that there is a clear and pressing need to improve the resilience and efficiency of middle- and back-office processes.”

According to the Futures Industry Association (FIA), trading volumes in futures and options contracts increased in aggregate by 32% in the first half of 2020 over 2019, reaching an all-time high. Exchanges have also seen high equity volumes, with Nasdaq reporting an increase of 62.7% in cash equity volumes year-on-year in Q2 2020. In addition, multiple major banks reported record fixed income volumes, currency volumes and associated revenue in Q2 statements, prompting a spike in activity in middle and back offices to deal with the demand.

Christian added, “Duco’s focus on delivering a highly resilient, machine-learning enabled platform has enabled our customers to cope with this market volatility, with our top clients’ volumes spiking by over 100% multiple times during the market turmoil. We are pleased with the increasing number of mandates now deploying Duco enterprise-wide to solve data challenges.”