Managing $80m+ in Investment Contracts with Django

Prior to engaging Six Feet Up, Hightower Services was using a technology that provided little transparency into the processes used for tracking inputs and withdrawals; had a vague auditing process; and required a great deal of manual input, which introduced human errors into a financial tracking system.

To improve the existing system and provide greater transparency, the new application had to ensure both data security and accuracy of the shares — down to the exact decimal point. Contract holders were guaranteed the correct payout, so it was critical for the system to calculate these funds precisely.

At its core, the new system used Amazon's S3 to securely handle the storage of over 22,000 contracts with a minimum of two documents attached to each contract. User session management, data encryption, intrusion detection and utilization of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model ensured data security and integrity.

Automated Cross-Platform Communication

To address the manual process of communicating fund valuations and transaction requirements, Six Feet Up developers created automations for receiving and ingesting the fund valuation files from the bank. The completed system’s files were then dropped into a secure SFTP server that lived outside of the app, and the file was picked up via an API. Once the file was ingested, the valuations were applied across all new transactions and a file for the bank was generated with details on which buys and sells to execute on each fund.

Process Automation

In collaboration with third-party service providers, Six Feet Up eliminated rounding errors, timing differences for transaction processing and discrepancies with fund balances by automating several processes. Specifically, Six Feet Up:

• instituted a policy of rounding unit transactions and balances to four decimal places to ensure accuracy between the partners;
• removed the human element by automating the ingestion of fund valuations and transaction reporting;
• automated payment letter generation, death claims processing, month-end reconciliation reporting, and daily fund drift calculations; and
• implemented real-time alerts when fund balances were not as expected.

Reconciliations

To ensure there would be no discrepancies with the fund balances received at the time of takeover, the Six Feet Up team:

• performed an audit of the original contract files provided at the inception of the project;
• identified processes that could potentially result in future fund balance discrepancies;
• identified a path for correction of these processes, then historically repaired any contract or transaction that was potentially impacted; and
• identified a path for ongoing reconciliation to ensure data integrity.

Tax Reporting

Hightower Services also needed to produce, validate and send tax documentation for the company’s clients and contract holders. To create a seamless reporting process, Six Feet Up worked closely with Hightower Services and the third-party partners to ensure all calculations were accurate and complete.