London Stock Exchange: Payroll transformation in three months

“Working with CloudPay was great. The people who I need to deal with and escalate things to are people who understand payroll, understand our business and how critical things are to us. It’s just what we need.”

– Head of Finance-Payroll, London Stock Exchange Group

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In 2018, Thomson Reuters’ financial and risk business was divested, later being purchased by the London Stock Exchange Group in January 2021. Seeking a seamless separation with zero disruption, LSEG needed a solution that could transition thousands of existing employees to the new company. Working with CloudPay, the team set up and rolled out over 50 new entities and nearly 120 new payrolls worldwide in just three months, meeting every payroll deadline and with no interruption to employees.

London Stock Exchange Group is a UK-based stock exchange and financial information company, with operations in 70 countries.

  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Use Case: Payroll transformation
  • Employees: 34k
  • Countries: 70
  • HCM: Workday

Highlights

Payroll transformation after acquisition

57 new entities and 117 new payrolls

Zero payroll disruption for existing employees

The Challenge

Separating the F&R business from Thomson Reuters and establishing it as a new company with an equally global footprint was a massive undertaking.

Separation required:

  • Establishing 50+ new legal entities
  • Transitioning thousands of employees to the new company in three months
  • Continuing to run all existing payrolls uninterrupted

The accelerated schedule meant typical implementation timelines couldn’t apply. Plus, the migration required deep understanding of countries’ varying payroll regulations and employment laws. The team needed a platform that could process the volume of payroll data and calculations, and an experienced partner who could ensure each country and entity’s requirements were met.

The Solution

As a long-time customer, Thomson Reuters knew CloudPay had the expertise, capability, and technology to facilitate the separation.

Several factors made the project more complex:

  • While Thomson Reuters is a publicly traded company, the new company would be privately owned, and most new legal entities were needed to replace existing ones within Thomson Reuters
  • In transferring employees from existing entities, the team had to address varying legal requirements for ending employment with one company and starting with another – without interrupting payroll or benefits
  • The rollout plan had to account for varying setup times across countries e.g. setting up new bank accounts


CloudPay used existing Thomson Reuters payrolls as a model for building new payrolls, amending data to reflect changes to individuals’ employment status, benefits, and payments on a country-bycountry basis. Using CloudPay’s standardized implementation methodology, the team set up 117 new payrolls for 57 new entities across 51 countries in a matter of weeks.

Results

Today, LSEG and CloudPay teams manage payroll for more than 18,500 employees in over 50 countries. They continue to benefit from the global service that has kept Thomson Reuters as a CloudPay customer since 2011.

The transformation team achieved:

  • Meeting every go-live date for all payrolls
  • Zero negative impact on payroll and benefits for existing employees
  • Transferring existing employee payslips to new entities so that employees didn’t have to download old ones before the switch

“As each legal entity was registered, CloudPay was ready to go. Based on CloudPay’s help and support, we did not miss one go-live. We would agree at the beginning of the month and we hit every single one of them.” – Head of Finance-Payroll

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