Funds Europe looks at some recent developments in fund management technology, which includes more firms enhancing their outsourcer oversight.
Two firms automate Nav oversight
Two more asset managers have automated the oversight of their net asset value (Nav) providers using vendor systems.
T. Rowe Price, a US firm with offices in London and Paris, has selected Lindedata’s Navquest, while Artemis, which is based in London, has selected Milestone Group’s pControl.
Growing complexity and regulatory changes were cited by Lindata as increasing the need of asset managers to seek automated solutions for oversight of externally generated Navs.
The systems used by T. Rowe Price and Artemis will use automation to highlight Nav exceptions.
Automated Nav oversight was identified earlier this year by Milestone as an area of increased demand and Jupiter Asset Management is another firm that has automated this function.
BNP Paribas SS uses artificial intelligence to match trades
BNP Paribas Securities Services (BNPPSS) is implementing Smart Chaser, a trade matching tool that uses artificial intelligence and predictive analysis, to increase trade processing services.
Thomas Durif, global head of middle office products at the firm, said: “We estimate that up to 30% of the trades processed on behalf of asset managers require manual intervention in order to complete. This is an industry-wide challenge, which is often caused by counterparties holding mismatching data for the same trade.
Using predictive analysis, Smart Chaser will analyse historical data to identify patterns in trades that have required manual intervention in the past and then warn clients and their brokers.
Durif said the system had reached 98% prediction accuracy.
Fintech firm enters asset management systems market
Finbourne Technology has launched a “revolutionary replacement software” for the asset management industry called Lusid.
Lusid is a cloud-based asset management platform that Inbourne hopes firms will use to replace existing in-house software and hardware to cut operational and capital costs.
Designed to be a “market utility”, Lusid is targeting the same market as BlackRock and Simcorp, vendors of the two leading investment management systems, which respectively are Aladdin and Dimension.
Finbourne claims that Lusid has “game-changing modernising benefits which no other contemporary system can claim”.
Finbourne Technology was founded on December 2016 and was initially financed by its three founder directors: Dermot Shortt, previously head of UBS Delta, Thomas McHugh, previously of UBS Delta, and Benedict Nielsen, formerly head of debt capital markets and syndication at Nomura.
The firm is based in Shoreditch, London, which is a fintech hub.
Eric partners with media company for MiFID II research offering
DC Thomson, a UK media group, and Electronic Research Interchange (Eric) have partnered to develop an investment research offering.
The two firms say the partnership will enable Eric to create tailored research solutions for investment managers and research providers using DC Thomson’s digital publishing experience to source and deliver content.
The partnership takes place in light of reforms to the way securities research is bought by asset managers under the incoming MiFID II rules.
Eric said it had chosen a non-financial services industry partner to retain the independence of its proposition and to benefit from DC Thomson’s indexing expertise.
This transaction will see DC Thomson acquire a material stake in Eric.
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