Prime Brokerage Value Streams | Capstera

A prime brokerage sits between hedge funds, asset managers, and the markets they trade in, bundling financing, custody, clearing, and reporting into a single relationship. This value stream deliverable lays out the 26 end-to-end flows a prime broker runs to keep that relationship working, from the first client conversation through trade execution, clearing, settlement, and custody. It's built for business and enterprise architects inside a prime brokerage, or consultants advising one, who need a working map of how the business delivers value before they redesign any part of it.

Business capability maps describe what a prime broker can do; this deliverable describes how those capabilities get exercised in sequence to serve a client. That distinction matters when the two are used together — capabilities are stable and structural, value streams show the flow. Architects use that flow to spot where a step adds no value, where clearing hands off badly to settlement, or where a new regulation touches several stages instead of one.

The value streams are decomposed to one level of high-level detail: enough steps to identify where activities occur and how they connect, not enough to specify individual tasks or system fields. That level suits scoping conversations, cross-mapping exercises, and workshop kickoffs better than a fully detailed process map would.

Because prime brokerage sits at the intersection of trading, financing, and custody, a change in one area — a new margin rule, a shift in how collateral gets managed — often touches several of these flows at once. Having them already documented gives an architect a place to start tracing that impact instead of reconstructing the current state from memory and a handful of stakeholder interviews.

What's Inside

• 26 value stream flows covering the core activities of a prime brokerage, from client onboarding through trade execution, clearing, settlement, and custody services
• Each value stream decomposed to one level of high-level detail, showing the stages and how they connect
• A bundled Value Streams Guide explaining the value stream concept and how to build on the deliverable

These are business architecture value streams, not LEAN value streams, and the set doesn't include business capabilities, detailed process maps, or client journey maps — those live in separate Capstera products.

How Teams Use It

A business architect mapping a new client segment — say, a hedge fund launching a new derivatives strategy — starts here instead of white-boarding client onboarding from a blank page, using the existing flow as a checklist of what to adapt.

When a firm evaluates its trade execution process for redundant manual checks, the value stream provides a starting inventory of where those checks currently sit, ahead of pulling in operations for a closer look.

Ahead of a new regulation that touches settlement, an architect can trace which downstream stages depend on the affected step, without first assembling manual process narratives from three departments.

Where a firm wants to align client journey mapping with internal operations, the value stream gives customer-facing teams a shared reference for where their touchpoints sit in the broader flow.

A team reviewing the custody service line as part of a broader operating model review can pull that portion of the value stream directly into the discussion, rather than describing the flow verbally from institutional memory.

Format & Delivery

The value streams are delivered as an editable PowerPoint file, with the Value Streams Guide included as a companion PDF. Both are available to download the moment your order goes through, no waiting on a fulfillment team. Two licensing tiers cover individual and enterprise use, so the right one depends on how many people at your firm will work with the file.