This segment has been undergoing significant operational transformation in the past few years. Mergers and acquisitions, increased competition and new regulatory requirements have driven banks to reevaluate their retail market strategies. Banks must leverage technology to optimize sales and fulfillment processes, manage distribution channels, and streamline operations to acquire, satisfy, and thereby retain or grow their business. CIC has many retail banking customers interested in building strategies and reliable systems that can help them improve the efficiency of their operations while meeting their business goals effectively.
We collaborate with investment banks to help them manage core functions like brokerage, asset management and wealth management efficiently while managing risks and regulatory compliances. Higher customer expectations, low margins, workflow disconnects and data redundancies continue to challenge investment institutions. Complying with government regulations like Basel II and incorporating frameworks like Straight Through Processing (STP) present additional challenges. To be able to service 24x7 in these demanding environments, investment banks have made IT an integral part of their strategic initiatives.
Federal and state government regulations in the banking industry have become increasingly complex with new directives being introduced at an increasing pace. Compliance with Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley, Solvency II and MiFID has become important for companies involved in the financial sector. The costs involved in meeting compliance have also risen significantly. Banks need to adopt more strategic approaches to meet regulatory compliance. We help institutions address their regulatory demands effectively. With integrated risk management and compliance controls, banks and financial institutions benefit from improved performance.
We are in the business of building strategies and solutions for corporate banks that meet ever-evolving needs of their corporate customers. They benefit from unified multi-channel views of their corporate customers and automated processes that increase profitability and customer satisfaction. In today's world, banks are being asked to deliver increasingly sophisticated services to meet expectations of their corporate customers. It has become critical for them to leverage technology to provide comprehensive product and account management for corporate banking products. To exceed your corporate clients' expectations, you must broaden existing relationships and attract new clients with your banking services. Columbus Corp provides customized solutions and services that let you bring new benefits to businesses of all sizes. We offer our corporate clients individual solutions, such as payroll card programs, or full suites, such as check representment with authorization service and centralized returns. Your presence in today's market with the most up-to-date corporate banking services without investing in infrastructure, personnel or maintenance. We provide technological innovations, operations and systems support, and dedicated customer service. Join hands with us to break the bounds of geography and compete anywhere in the nation. Our state-of-the-art technology gives you all the advantages of internet applications, electronic image exchange and service-oriented architecture.
Economic growth in the past few years has created many high net worth and affluent individuals. Customer expectations have heightened because they look for a relationship rather than a single product solution to manage their wealth. This has presented banks with opportunities to act as financial advisors who can improve the liquidity value of customers' assets. CIC has dedicated professionals to work with wealth managers to manage their customers' needs. By empowering them with real-time access to integrated client information throughout the advisory relationship, CIC has helped these organizations meet their client goals successfully.
CIC leverages its business and technology expertise and its industry solutions to help credit card issuers, transaction processing agencies, credit bureaus, large merchants and payment networks implement strategies and solutions that improve process efficiencies, simplify transactions, speed up time-to-market for products and reduce risks. Today's increasing competition in financial institutions to attract customers as well as security threats to sensitive customer and business data and margin pressures present significant challenges to many of the credit cards companies. As we know, the choices customers have at their disposal are increasing, so it becomes essential for companies to have different offerings and devise new ways to enhance customer satisfaction. The role of IT has shifted from being an internal support mechanism to an incubator of strategies and solutions that have the potential of creating much needed marketplace advantage.
Information technology has transformed the capital markets. Markets have become interconnected resulting in the emergence of transnational markets and global exchanges. Aggressive growth and accurate processing of high volumes of transactions has become imperative for financial companies to deliver the best customer service. Our team has worked with exchanges across the nation to help them with critical trading solutions that support multiple channels and span across equities, derivatives, commodities, forex and fixed income instruments that cover different types of trading methodologies. With growing volumes, exchanges must also deploy strong, flexible and scalable trading solutions that can increase agility and transparency in the trading businesses. CIC can help you identify and assemble the core building blocks to improve trade processing responsiveness, variability and resiliency. Our offerings begin with the analysis and evaluation of your trade processing environments. By selecting the right set of business processes, we can help you manage the cost and risks of transforming your trading environments, such as automating your order capture, routing and execution; integrating post-execution processing from trade matching on the exchange up to settlement; and optimizing your infrastructure for managing the interconnectivity of trade-related messaging. Our banking and financials solutions can help differentiate your firm in an increasingly competitive marketplace by rapidly delivering new capabilities to your customer and establishing your organization as a leader in the markets your firm serves; enabling enterprise-wide trade cycle management by leveraging integrated automation of middle and back-office processes; and improving efficiency as well as increasing transaction capacity and staff productivity while reducing operational and financial risk.
Our team of professionals helps banks deploy the right technology solutions that are aligned with their business needs. With an integrated enterprise, banks benefit from increased productivity, real-time processing and synchronized processes. Financial institutions are transforming the way they do business. Technology is enabling a new era of connectivity where employees, clients and business partners are making transactions quickly, accurately and securely. This has made it important for banks to deploy the right technology architecture, applications and policies to operate as truly connected and integrated enterprises. Competitive success in the financial industry depends on optimized, integrated and precision data management. Sub-optimized processes and excess amounts of information that may exist in your firm can limit your ability to control costs and provide quality data across the enterprise. By moving to an integrated data management environment, you enable a security-rich, dependable and available system that can help widen your competitive edge.