When an executive first reached out to KOR on LinkedIn, he wasn’t even at the bank yet. He just believed in what the company was building. Eighteen months later, on his first day there, he learned that his new employer needed a new reporting solution and was in an active RFP. He already knew exactly who to call.
THE SITUATION
A reporting system that had become a liability
Over years of incremental change, the bank’s transaction reporting infrastructure had grown into something nobody fully understood. Rules and transformation logic were scattered across source systems, intermediate layers, and locations that had been lost to institutional memory. Every time a discrepancy appeared, resolving it meant tracking down developers, digging through legacy code, and hoping the right people were still at the bank.
The costs were substantial. Investigation timelines stretched, remediation bills mounted, and the system introduced material risk exposure for both the bank and its regulators. Rather than default to continuing to bandaid the legacy systems as the recurring tactical goto, the bank committed to a full-scope overhaul.
They evaluated legacy providers but none cleared the bar. So they took a deliberate three-month pause: not to delay, but to redefine. To interrogate precisely what they needed, and to ask honestly whether anything on the market could actually deliver it.
The answer they kept returning to was the same three things: simplification, transparency, and genuine ownership of their own data.
“The rules and logic were basically everywhere. It became unmanageable. Transformation logics, decision-making logics were sitting in the source system, somewhere in between. Nobody knew where it actually was.”
Executive, Regulatory and Compliance Delivery, Large Global Bank
THE SEARCH
Why every major player fell short
The team ran a full market evaluation. Every significant vendor was considered. None of them passed.
The failure wasn’t purely technical. The bigger vendors could move data. What they couldn’t do was make that process visible, auditable, or accessible to the people who needed to work with it every day. When something went wrong, users were still dependent on vendor support or internal developers to diagnose a system they couldn’t see inside. That was precisely the problem the bank was trying to escape.
What the bank was looking for was specific:
Full visibility into how data is transformed at every step
Tools built for operations teams, not just technical specialists
A vendor willing to take ownership of the data layer without creating another black box
Simplified infrastructure that reduced dependency on internal development resource
None of the established players offered all of this. KOR did.
WHY KOR
Built by people who know what it’s like to operate these systems
The relationship with KOR began before this engagement, and before the bank itself was in the picture. At a previous firm, the MD saw KOR’s announcement on LinkedIn about its new SaaS trade repository platform (which is what KOR originally started off as before adding the trade reporting capabilities) and reached out directly, not because he had a live requirement, but because he believed in what they were building and was curious to learn more. Over the following 18 months, a working relationship developed through regular conversations about industry challenges, demos, and proofs of concept. When he eventually moved to a new role and learned on day one that a reporting system was needed, the right decision became abundantly clear.
What made KOR different wasn’t a feature list; though KOR has delivered a host of industry firsts. It was where the platform came from. Most reporting systems are engineered by people who understand data movement. KOR was built by people who understand trade reporting! People that have actually operated reporting functions, managed remediation under pressure, and know what it costs when something breaks and nobody can find the answer quickly.
“Most reporting systems were built by people who understand ‘take data, do something to it, give it to somebody.’ That doesn’t solve problems like efficiency, cost, and timeliness. KOR is different because the people who built it actually know the operational aspect.”
Executive, Regulatory and Compliance Delivery, Large Global Bank
That background shapes everything about the platform. Visibility and transparency aren’t bolt-on features in KOR; they are the foundation. The design is thoughtful at every step, built with genuine empathy for the people who have to operate these systems day in, day out, including those who are not deeply technical.
“Because of that empathy and understanding of reporting operations, visibility and transparency are a big theme of the KOR platform. The design is very thoughtful and very, very well done at every step of operating a reporting system.”
Executive, Regulatory and Compliance Delivery, Large Global Bank
The result is a platform that reduces cost not by doing less, but by giving the right people the ability to do more.
“KOR had the best usability and UX in the industry for reporting stacks. None of the big players hit the mark on transparency, usability, and pushing power to the users.”
Executive, Regulatory and Compliance Delivery, Large Global Bank
THE PARTNERSHIP
Shared success, not a handover
Phase 1 Implementation was completed exactly six months after it began. But the timeline was not what stood out. What the bank’s team remarked on most was the way KOR showed up throughout the project.
In enterprise software delivery, it is common for a vendor’s engagement to peak at the sale and taper off through delivery. KOR operated differently. The team remained genuinely invested in the outcome at every stage, treating go-live not as a finish line for KOR but as a shared milestone for both parties.
“A lot of times, vendors are just trying to get it done and throw it over the fence. I never got that sense from KOR. It felt like shared success across the board. KOR really wanted us to be successful together.”
Executive, Regulatory and Compliance Delivery, Large Global Bank
That sentiment extended beyond the project itself. Asked to reflect on the experience, the executive’s response was unambiguous: “I truly love the people at KOR.”
Not only was KOR working on implementing a new client, untangling years of inhouse complexity, but was doing so in parallel for a brand new re-write. The deadlines could not be moved, the room for error did not exist. The result - Success! Through strong collaboration between both teams, KOR was able to not only get the client live in-time, paving the way for a successful rollout of other jurisdictions in the coming months.
THE RESULTS
What changed
4.5 months - To implement Canadian reporting with KOR, compared to an industry standard of up to 12 months per reporting regime change
50-80% - Reduction in remediation time, with issues now resolved directly by operations teams rather than requiring developer investigation
85-90% - Reduction in technology resource required to run the reporting function, freeing specialists to focus on higher-value work
$10-12M - Estimated saving from redeployment of technology resources following full migration of OTC reporting to KOR
