Nice to meet you... an introduction

Anyone that knows me knows I have always wanted to build my own software for securities administration and tax reporting - having experienced first hand the administration and legacy system constraints within operations generally, the pain of data migrations and implementations. Often dealing with poorly mapped interfaces due to the original setter-upper not quite understanding the impact of those very transactions, or indeed how the target system deals with them. Of course there are many good options out there, but, and here is the crux of it, they never quite do everything and I always find myself coming up with a million processes or manual work arounds for the same (or similar) issues across our clients and internally.

You see, the normal pattern is thus:

It really is a backwards way of doing things, I'm not sure Jaguar go out and ask potential customers if they wish to try a new model of their car - it's going to be bigger, better, faster than ever before... but you'll need to tell us what the requirements are and how you want us to build it. (Asking professional racing drivers doesn't count before anyone comes up with an actual example, but you get my point). But do we just do it because that's the way it's always done?

In January last year, pre-covid, it was drawn to my attention that our third party agreement for our tax host service had actually expired. In the course of discussing with the vendor the next steps we were informed that the agreement would not be renewed. As you would imagine with any reliance on third party software, a slight wave of panic swept over me about how we could ensure our clients weren't negatively impacted. I finished the call and regrouped my thoughts. The panic turned to rage, a little, but that rage really got me thinking and we decided to build our own software. The decision was a little more drawn out - although that's what I decided in January, I still had to ensure we did this right for the longevity of the business; for the sake of the team and more importantly for our customers. And of course to ensure my long-standing dream of building something new wasn't skewing my judgement.

We reviewed alternatives that we have used and know, we reviewed new players and considered new partners we could approach, we revisited old relationships and each time an alternative "less risky than building your own" option was reviewed, my gut kept nagging that this is just going to leave us vulnerable to the same risks. And still unable to service or grow our client base the way we would like. So the decision was made to build our own, we had under a year to cobble something together at this point (don't panic).

We first had a look at what we wanted - not just for our current clients but for the overarching tax function on the basis of what it should be doing, best practice. We used our experience to carve out the basics of the software requirements.

We looked at investor based funding options early, clearly building any tech is not a cheap or easy task, throw in the complexity of CGT calculations and you can easily run away with the budget. These options didn't appeal at this stage, I'll tell you why in a moment. Our advantage really is that we were starting from scratch. Most firms that embark on this type of build are trying to shoehorn a solution into different technology. Sometimes it's impossible due to the age of the code and the impossibility of refactoring, sometimes it's simply too far removed from what the CGT calculation has to do (essentially it ends up costing far more then anticipated or being abandoned). Additionally, funding options always seem to centre on the building of the bare minimum for MVP, and whilst this is critical thinking from a commercial perspective it is not how you ensure the system is future proofed and should not be the only factor. We decided to set a budget and build it ourselves.

Costing basis and requirements figured out, we got to work.

I won't go into the details of the whole year, though I do now wish I had kept a diary of the journey but what a year it has been. We have had highs, lows, snags, laughter, tears, hysterics and madness, all while dealing with a little smidgen of a pandemic and evolving in our lives to try and adapt to the new normal. In case it's not clear though, I do not mean this to trivialise the situation, but more a tongue in cheek nod to how it has complicated things. Collaboration with developers and BA's with no experience of CGT rules via teams isn't quite the same as gathering over a table/whiteboard in a group. But it is not often you get to realise one of you career long dreams and we are here. Finally, at launch. (it was scheduled for late November but that was perhaps ambitious given the pandemic and the fact we only started building code in JULY! I know, crazy!)

We have more than doubled our team in the last year to ensure the core structure at KAWC can support the growth we envisage. I've not been able to share the wealth of extra experience and developments fully, but we hope to assure our loyal and potential new clients that we are more than ready for expansion without any loss of service, and certainly no dip in the quality. We are ready.

There has been a degree of secrecy to this task, due to the sensitivity of ensuring our existing clients are not impacted, which has been quite challenging and frustrating at times. We have sought opinions on our ideas, vision, design, and of course the final product from ex-colleagues, associates and existing clients to ensure we haven't missed anything in our eagerness to build to our own specification, all under a veil of hush that is not befitting a system so cool. (I'm not biased..) Truly, I don't think I am - our market research and selective feedback has been extremely encouraging and prelaunch we have already secured a number of demo's from firms of varying sizes wanting to explore an alternative to the prescribes norms in our very outdated (tech-wise) sector.

I am so very proud to be able to announce our arrival TIARA

We hope to bring a fresh, modern, simpler approach. A seamless plug and play solution for all clients with securities tax reporting requirements.