The Exception Management Tool (EMT) was developed at Sharegain to streamline and optimise the handling of trade exceptions within securities lending operations. Trade exceptions occur when discrepancies or errors disrupt the seamless flow of transactions, creating challenges for operational teams. EMT was designed to centralise and automate exception handling, reduce manual interventions, and provide critical trade insights, ultimately enabling faster resolutions and improving operational efficiency.
Old admin dashboard was a major bottleneck in managing securities lending. The system was slow, difficult to navigate, and lacked essential functionalities, forcing users to rely on manual workarounds. Trade details and exception statuses were buried in complex interfaces, making issue resolution inefficient. Excessive manual input increased the risk of errors, while poor data accessibility delayed decision-making.
Additionally, the platform lacked automated workflows for handling failed trades, collateral mismatches, and liquidity issues, leading to prolonged resolution times. These inefficiencies created operational bottlenecks and heightened financial risks, making an improved solution essential.
The objective of this project was to create an efficient operations tool for the Operations Team, streamlining exception management and reducing inefficiencies.
My design process blended the Double Diamond framework with Continuous Discovery and Delivery methodology. I explored the problem space through stakeholder input, then iterated continuously, gathering feedback to refine solutions and ensure each design decision addressed real needs and improved efficiency.
OPS Schedule
From the very start of this project, I collaborated closely with four key stakeholders from the Operations (OPS) team on a daily basis. It quickly became evident that their workflow was highly structured, with a series of critical tasks that had to be completed at specific times throughout the day.
Their schedule revolved around precise deadlines, such as reviewing settlements, monitoring exposures, and handling loan returns. Understanding this rigid timing was essential to identifying inefficiencies and areas where automation or process optimization could have the greatest impact.
Loan Lifecycle
To gain a clear understanding of the OPS team's processes, I mapped out the full Loan Lifecycle, a foundational framework that underpins their daily operations. This lifecycle is structured around four key stages:
1. Booking
2. Collateralization (Triparty, Billateral)
3. Instructions (via SWIFT, via SFTP)
4. Statuses & Settlement
Each stage plays a crucial role in ensuring smooth trade execution, from the initial booking of a loan to the final settlement.
Problem Space
To fully understand the problem space, I worked closely with the PM and Team Lead to conduct a series of interviews, uncovering pain points and opportunities across the OPS workflow. This was an ongoing process, with new insights continuously added to our Opportunity Solution Tree (OST). Through this research, we identified inefficiencies across key areas like Settlement, Billing, Collateralization and other areas.
To make sense of the findings, we categorized them into distinct themes, such as the time wasted searching for tasks, the effort spent correcting data, inefficiencies caused by poor UX, the burden of client communications, the frequent reliance on R&D for support and others. This structured approach helped us prioritize the most impactful opportunities for improvement.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
With a clear understanding of the problem space, the team came together to prioritize which opportunities to tackle in the MVP. Through discussions and analysis, we recognized that the most immediate impact would come from addressing the daily pain points the OPS team faced in Settlements, specifically around exceptions like Short, Unmatched, and Nacked trades.
These issues created significant inefficiencies, requiring constant manual intervention and delaying critical processes. By focusing on streamlining and automating these areas, we aimed to reduce friction in daily operations and improve overall workflow efficiency. Prioritizing these challenges ensured that our MVP would deliver tangible value from day one.
Exception Management Mechanism (EMM)
While we were laser-focused on solving the settlement issues in the short term, the team also took a step back to think about the long-term vision for the tool. We realized that many other operational processes — such as Collateral, Billing, Corporate Actions, and others — also suffered from similar exception management challenges. This led us to conceptualize a high-level architecture where Exception Management Mechanism would serve as the core logic, capable of handling exceptions across multiple operational areas. The image below represents how we envisioned the tool's broader functionality, ensuring scalability and future improvements beyond just Settlements.
User Flows
To further refine our understanding of the most pressing settlement issues, I conducted a series of interviews focused on mapping out the user flows for Short, Unmatched, Nacked and Rejected trades. These exceptions were recurring pain points for the OPS team, often requiring significant manual effort to resolve.
Through these interviews, I worked closely with stakeholders to break down their current processes step by step, identifying where inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and workarounds existed. This deep dive helped surface critical insights, such as how users identified exceptions, the actions they took to resolve them, and the decision-making logic behind their workflows. By visualizing these flows, I was able to highlight gaps in the process and uncover opportunities to introduce automation, improve system feedback, and reduce reliance on manual intervention.
These findings became the foundation for designing a more intuitive and streamlined settlement experience, ensuring that the new solution would directly address user pain points and integrate seamlessly into their daily operations.
In a complex business environment like securities lending, many processes are interconnected, often touching multiple areas such as Lender, Borrower, and R&D. While working on exception management and optimizing user flows, we frequently encountered challenges that extended beyond our immediate team’s scope. Some opportunities overlapped with other squads’ responsibilities, while others required input from multiple teams to ensure a seamless resolution.
To navigate this, we established a cross-squad collaboration framework where we identified, discussed, and prioritized these shared challenges. The diagram below represents how we approached this—mapping issues based on impact and effort, aligning priorities across squads, and ensuring that the most critical problems received the necessary attention.
By working closely with Lender, Borrower, and R&D teams, we were able to streamline exception handling, improve communication, and reduce operational friction. This approach ensured that each squad had visibility into dependencies and could collectively drive solutions forward, minimizing bottlenecks in a highly regulated and fast-moving financial ecosystem.
During the ideation phase, my primary focus was to design an intuitive and structured interface that would streamline exception management. Through multiple iterations and feedback loops, I developed a cascade layout that ensures all necessary information is easily accessible in one place.
This structured approach enhances efficiency, reduces cognitive load, and ensures that users can manage exceptions with clarity and confidence.
After defining the cascade layout, I focused on refining its key sections to ensure a seamless user experience. I explored different approaches, iterating on structure, hierarchy, and interactions to optimize clarity and efficiency. Through this process, I fine-tuned the design to balance detailed information with usability, ensuring that users could navigate and act on trade exceptions effortlessly.
In the fast-paced world of securities lending, managing trade exceptions efficiently is crucial. The Exception Management Tool (EMT) was designed to streamline the resolution process for trade discrepancies, reducing manual effort and minimizing financial risk.
This section organizes trade exceptions into categories like Short, Unmatched, Nacked and Rejected, displaying key details and time-sensitive actions. Each exception group includes its trade type, such as Loan or Recall, while countdown timers indicate the time remaining until the first exception in the group reaches its deadline.
This panel presents key trade details in a structured format, including trade type, counterparties, dates, and financial metrics. Editable fields enable quick adjustments, while the clean layout ensures clarity and efficiency. Countdown indicators help users track time-sensitive actions at a glance.
This section provides a chronological view of trade exceptions and related actions. Each entry logs key details, timestamps, and user interventions for clear tracking. Status icons and structured formatting make it easy to review past decisions.
My Day helps users stay on top of daily tasks with a clear progress overview. A visual breakdown highlights completed and outstanding tasks. With intuitive charts, users can quickly assess their workload and prioritize actions efficiently.
We tracked three key metrics to measure EMT’s impact. The most critical was reducing manual operations per trade, achieving an 82% reduction—nearly reaching our 85% target. This significantly improved efficiency by automating processes and reducing repetitive tasks. Adoption was another key focus, with EMT handling 64% of settlement processes, proving its effectiveness in streamlining workflows.
To assess daily efficiency, we integrated a dashboard survey where the operations team rated their productivity. The average score of 6.26 highlights clear improvements while identifying areas for further optimization. These results showcase EMT’s impact and guide future enhancements.
