Solving Margin Call and Collateral Challenges for the Buy-Side

For asset managers, treasury operations form the backbone of daily fund management. From managing liquidity to ensuring operational integrity, functions such as margin calls, collateral management, and cash forecasting are indispensable. Yet these processes remain burdened by inefficiencies, manual intervention, and a lack of real-time visibility.

Buy-side firms simply can’t afford errors or delays in treasury workflows. The margin call process alone exemplifies the operational pain points many firms face—like manual reconciliations, inconsistent views of data, and fragmented systems. Each of these increases risk and cost while hindering scalability.

In this blog, we explore why traditional treasury processes fall short, what capabilities the modern buy-side needs, and how new technology is helping asset managers overcome these challenges effectively.

The Traditional Margin Call Dilemma

Before trading even begins, treasury teams are immersed in reconciliation work. For asset managers with 80 to 100 separate accounts, this means manually selecting counterparty emails, entering reconciliation amounts, and double-checking every step.

The inefficiencies extend further when calculating margin calls. Most firms rely on spreadsheets and macros to process non-standardized data from counterparties. If counterparty details change, the macro breaks. If a user applies the wrong rule, the margin call is incorrect. What should be a routine, automated workflow becomes an error-prone bottleneck.

The settlement process adds another layer of complexity. Each counterparty may settle on a different schedule, creating mismatches between an asset manager’s records and the counterparty’s files. Pinpointing discrepancies requires navigating through position-level data across hundreds of columns. Such manual detective work wastes time that should be spent making strategic treasury decisions.

Finally, there is the ISDA challenge. Prime brokers interpret ISDA agreements differently, meaning independent amount (IA) rules vary widely. Asset managers must painstakingly deconstruct agreements and configure rules for each broker, often through the same spreadsheet-based methods that are already stretched to the limit.

The result? A process that is time-intensive, costly, and fraught with risk at every step.

Beyond Margin Calls: Collateral and Cash Management

The challenges of margin calls are part of a larger issue. Cash and collateral management can be just as inefficient. Discrepancies between internal accounting systems and custodians often lead to inconsistent views of cash flows. These mismatches make it difficult to answer critical questions, including:

• Which trades can be executed without liquidity risk?
• Which collateral should be pledged to optimize cost and capital efficiency?
• Where do counterparty disputes originate, and how can they be resolved quickly?

Most firms compound these challenges by taking a best-of-breed approach, using separate systems for margin, collateral, cash management, and dispute resolution. While this may seem flexible, the reality is that disparate systems increase costs, siloed data, and operational friction.

The Strategic Case for Transformation

Inefficiencies in traditional treasury processes aren’t just operational concerns. They have serious financial and strategic implications. Manual workflows increase the risk of disputes, delay decision-making, and limit scalability. They also drive up costs as firms must allocate additional resources to reconcile data, manage multiple systems, and resolve errors.

At a time when buy-side firms face tighter margins, increased regulatory oversight, and growing investor demands for transparency, these inefficiencies are no longer sustainable. Treasury functions must evolve from a reactive, operational approach to a more proactive and strategic one.

This shift starts with establishing a truly integrated treasury platform that can transform the function by:

• Enhancing accuracy through automation and normalization
• Improving efficiency by reducing the need for manual intervention
• Informing decision-making with real-time visibility into liquidity and collateral
• Reducing costs associated with multiple systems, errors, and disputes
• Strengthening resilience in volatile markets by ensuring treasury teams can respond quickly to changing conditions

How IVP Treasury Management Delivers Value

IVP Treasury Management is designed to address these challenges head-on. It provides a single, unified interface that integrates margin call, collateral, cash, and dispute management, reducing operational friction while increasing transparency and control.

With its configurable automation, normalized data models, and built-in optimization tools, IVP Treasury Management enables buy-side firms to streamline workflows and focus on what matters most: making strategic decisions that protect and grow investor capital.

The solution also offers modular deployment, allowing firms to prioritize their most pressing needs and scale capabilities over time. Whether starting with cash management, expanding into collateral optimization, or automating margin calls, firms can evolve treasury operations without the cost and complexity of managing disparate systems.

Conclusion

For too long, buy-side treasury teams have been held back by manual processes, inconsistent data, and fragmented systems. Margin calls, collateral management, and cash forecasting—core functions that should be efficient and reliable—have instead become sources of unnecessary risk and cost.

The way forward is clear: treasury operations must evolve. By adopting an integrated, automated, and transparent treasury management platform, asset managers can transform a historically reactive function into a strategic enabler of fund performance.

With IVP Treasury Management, buy-side firms gain more than just operational efficiency. They establish a foundation for long-term resilience, cost optimization, and strategic growth.