May 21, 2015

Asset Management

A typical Asset Management firm has various systems providing some important business functions, like trading, accounting, pricing, etc. However it is common that the systems in general are disparate, without standardized interaction protocols. Each system possibly could or could not provide intra-system data consistency, but very often firms lack integrated presentation of diverse information reflecting the business. This absence of single view of an Asset Manager of its positions, trades, and related information aggregated as needed for reporting, evaluation of performance, risk, forecasting, etc. can be a game changer for the firm.

We recommend building architecture with a data store, real or virtual. The data store accumulates information from the firm’s specialized systems, cleanses and integrates it, and provides current and historic information for reporting, analysis, forecasting, operations, business process management, and other consumption, as needed to make the company’s business highly effective and profitable.

Based on detail analysis of current business needs for conformed data and evaluations of data assets, a decision should be made about architecture of the data store that could be presented as a data warehouse, an operational data store, one or multiple data marts, virtual store with access to the underlying data sources at request time, or some combination of them.

Business Functions:

A typical asset management firm should have systems supporting its business functions, including but not limited to:

  • Trade processing
  • Accounting
  • Operational reporting
  • Regulatory reporting
  • Securities modeling
  • Pricing
  • Analytics
  • Risk management
  • Performance evaluation
  • Obtaining information from various sources
  • Information reconciliation
  • Keeping account of customer capital
  • Customer relationship management