ALM Securities is an Icelandic securities company providing financial services to corporates, institutions, pension funds, and individuals. Founded in 2009, the firm operates in a specialized market where transactions are tightly tied to Central Bank of Iceland indicators and cross-referenced against international benchmark rates.
ALM's mix of fixed-income asset and liability management, securities servicing, and commercial lending requires a level of operational precision that smaller financial institutions rarely maintain on legacy tools. As the portfolio grew, moving to a purpose-built platform became a prerequisite for scaling the business without scaling operational risk.
ALM's mix of fixed-income asset and liability management, securities servicing, and commercial lending requires a level of operational precision that smaller financial institutions rarely maintain on legacy tools. As the portfolio grew, moving to a purpose-built platform became a prerequisite for scaling the business without scaling operational risk.
8 min.
to submit a loan application
6 mo.
time-to-market
100%
digital loan processing
Challenge
Automation of securities management
Between 2009 and 2022, the client relied on Excel spreadsheets for handling their fixed-income
asset and liability transactions. However, with the expansion of their business, they
encountered a growing issue of escalating manual workload and an increasing number of human
errors. To address this challenge, the client sought the expertise of HES FinTech to implement a
cloud-based solution that would comprehensively automate intricate calculations and reduce the
need for manual data input.
We're extremely satisfied with how HES FinTech is currently serving us. In just 6 months, we went from
storing all our data in Excel to a fast, reliable, and user-friendly platform that caters to our
specific needs.
Approach
Custom system for securities servicing
After a detailed assessment of the project's scope, the HES FinTech BA team identified the client’s need for a fully customized securities transaction management system.
The project presented four main challenges: automating comprehensive interest calculations, enabling automatic payment processing, generating real-time charts and reports, and ensuring continuous synchronization of interest rate adjustments based on the Central Bank of Iceland's indicators. Additionally, the system’s adaptability allows it to handle multiple currencies and scale seamlessly with the client's business growth.
To address these challenges, HES developers integrated the client's accounting system with services like CreditInfo and sourced EURIBOR, STIBOR, and NIBOR rates. Our team also successfully connected HES LoanBox to the Central Bank of Iceland and various commercial banks. For optimal performance and data security, the system is hosted on AWS cloud services.
Result
6 months from idea to a working business
ALM Securities received a fully functional and dependable system for overseeing
securities transactions. The intuitive user interface streamlines manual data input, resulting
in time savings for employees. Furthermore, the automated calculations have notably decreased
the occurrence of errors, reducing the impact of the human factor. The system has continued to
operate successfully, effectively optimizing the client's operational expenses.
After the launch, ALM Securities requested assistance with the onboarding phase. Our partnership
has since expanded, and the HES team now offers technical support and system enhancements.
Partners
Assets
Operations
The 6-month time-to-market covered the full path from business analysis to a production-ready environment, effectively replacing a decade of Excel-based workflows. For a project of this scope, those 6 months represent a controlled migration rather than a rushed rollout — data integrity had to be validated against historical positions before go-live.
Loan submission, previously dependent on manual spreadsheet entry, now takes around 8 minutes end to end. Borrower data and contractual parameters are pulled and validated automatically, leaving operators only the decisions that genuinely require human judgment.
The shift to 100% digital loan processing removed the parallel Excel files and email-based approvals that previously sat alongside the formal workflow. Every step — from application intake to reporting — runs inside a single system, giving ALM a consistent audit trail and eliminating spreadsheet version-control issues.
Loan submission, previously dependent on manual spreadsheet entry, now takes around 8 minutes end to end. Borrower data and contractual parameters are pulled and validated automatically, leaving operators only the decisions that genuinely require human judgment.
The shift to 100% digital loan processing removed the parallel Excel files and email-based approvals that previously sat alongside the formal workflow. Every step — from application intake to reporting — runs inside a single system, giving ALM a consistent audit trail and eliminating spreadsheet version-control issues.
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