James Maxfield believes Duco is more than just a technology company. The firm’s chief product officer knows how, “it is really important that we bring thought leadership to our customers, we’re not just a partner that sells them automation.”
Central to that service is being able to provide differing perspectives and innovative ideas that can help transform their customers’ data operations. Maxfield believes that the firm’s track record and the reputation it has earned in its decade of existence, only strengthens their ability to make positive change across the industry.
“Duco has been here for 10 years now and we’ve always been pioneers. We were the first into the cloud, the first to use AI within the reconciliation experience,” he explains. “Clients talk to me often about how they see us as an innovation partner, capable of bringing them ideas that they can’t do themselves. Being able to do that for our clients is very much a key part of what we do. We offer them a very different way of thinking about the process.”
When Maxfield and I spoke last Autumn, we discussed the hurdles he has faced, learned from, and overcome in his career. Now, meeting in DUCO’s London office, he is ready to take on the next challenge.
“There’s a very powerful AI hype out there where everything needs to be seen to be AI-powered, and if it’s not, then it can’t necessarily solve the problem. That’s not just a challenge for us here, but I see that across the industry,” he says. “It is a balancing act with customers in explaining to them which tool is the right to use for the job. Let us worry about the choice of automation to solve the business problem, rather than worrying too much around what underpins it.”
Helping clients take the next steps in their levels of automation is at the heart of Duco’s work and building the best product for the industry, rather than the trendiest, is what Maxfield strives for.
New wheels
Maxfield’s earnest demeanour has not changed since we last met, but his passion for his work has been elevated yet further by the release of Duco’s refreshed Reconciliation Maturity Model.
The refreshed guide aims to allow clients to benchmark their reconciliation function and, as firms advance their reconciliation maturity, will show the impact upon audit costs and risk events.
The framework, complete with five stages of maturity – Manual Chaos, Hybrid Capabilities, Centralised Excellence, Fully Federated, and Continuous Improvement – allows firms to contemplate their current situation and enables them to consider the next moves away from manual processing.
“It’s really about trying to bring customers ideas around how they can transform, how they can optimise, how they can improve their scalability and control. I think that’s one of the reasons why we bring these types of things to the market, to be able to help customers move forward on the journey,” Maxfield says.
What is the state of play when it comes to automation in the reconciliation process?
“Reconciliation sounds simple, but the reality is everybody does it very differently. There’s lots of internal business complexities which means one organisation can look very, very different from another,” he replies. “Over time as they build institutionalised controls, you can very quickly end up with a Frankenstein-like model, but one is quite complex and quite hard to change.”
Maxfield analogises that it is a lot like “trying to change the wheels on a car, when you’re going on a motorway.” He explains that these legacy systems have become deeply complex and lack the standardisation required for scalability and efficiency.
For too long, institutions have thrown more people at the problems. Maxfield explains: “If you look at the world of reconciliation on its own, it’s still undergoing a fundamentally massive change for a lot of institutions. I talked to a small bank last week who has 1,000 end user controls. Some of our bigger customers have got between 2,000 and 5,000 of those.
“Typically what the industry has done over the last two decades, is they’ve applied people to the problems in introducing a new control to market. People don’t scale well. We want to be impactful around bringing automation there.”
Bringing in new automation has been of severe importance for a long time, but, Maxfield believes, no more so than right now. With market volatility in the US at a peak, stress points are created for banks, custodians, and asset managers and these need to be addressed.
“Where you have processes that are not very scalable because they’ve got lots of people in them, or you’re running controls on products or platforms that don’t do volume very well, you can bump into problems,” Maxfield adds. “For us, our value is being able to bring insights and practice to these people who have got very institutionalised ways of doing things.
“At Duco we pride ourselves on helping clients navigate complexity and we do that with deep industry expertise and a proprietary technique that drives success.”
Thinking differently
“That is a really good way to describe it,” Maxfield replies when asked if Duco considers themselves a ‘glue’ between technology and financial institutions.
“A lot of what we talk about at Duco is that we’re a platform that the users can configure and drive themselves. We give them autonomy and empowerment to solve real-world business challenges that they see every day.
“We can sit between systems and bring automation to the places that other systems can’t reach.”
Maxfield believes that a lot of Duco’s success comes from the fact that “we understand the market. Some of us have sat in roles that customers are in, so we’ve got good familiarity with their challenges.”
He also adds that “we can offer news ideas, we can also bring them best practice. We can also bring them standardisation in what quite often is a very kind of unstable, bespoke world.”
The source of Duco’s innovation comes, Maxfield believes, from the diversity of thought within the company. “The best thing about working at Duco is we have a great mix of different people here. Diversity of thought and experience is really exciting and energising,” he explains.
I noticed the answer echoed the sentiment of his CEO, Micharl Chin, whom I’d met with a fortnight previously — Maxfield was not surprised they shared a similar belief.
He says with fascination: “There are lots of people here who if given the same problem, will approach it in completely different ways. Depending on who you’re in the room with, you can have a different outcome.
“I would say it’s a very easy environment, even with someone my age, to learn a lot in. There’s always an interesting perspective that I hadn’t figured out yet.”
Maxfield takes great pride in not only his work, but the team he works alongside at Duco — a company he says has “cult following in the market and is quite unique.”
What is clear, above all, is that Duco sees itself and is far more than just a technology company.
Next interview →
State Street
Lucy Simpson
Image: Duco 
