Since the onset of the financial crisis, there has been a tiny trickle of good corporate news, a steady stream of bad news and numerous cases of no news, which generally serves to raise suspicion of worse news to come. As companies take measures to strengthen their balance sheets, they have to inform investors of their actions. This has increased pressure on custodians to reduce the time and cost involved with processing each corporate action.

A corporate action is an event initiated by a public company that affects holders of securities issued by that company. Such events have been plentiful throughout the credit crisis. Custody bank Brown Brothers Harriman said there had been a spike in the number of voluntary and capital-raising events over the past year. This includes a 25% to 30% increase in rights issues and debt exchange offers, which are complicated and therefore more risk-prone, require more manual processing and are the least scalable types of event.