Today, fund managers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Rising costs, investor demand for transparency, and downward fee pressures are roiling the industry and impacting business strategy. To combat these challenges, many firms are reassessing their current tech stack, actively embracing digital transformation, and aligning tools with their investment process to stand out from the competition and raise assets.
Tech providers have invested heavily in improving and modernizing their solutions over the last decade, including reimagined front office systems. The right trading and portfolio management tools can enhance firms’ operations, but choosing the right technology remains a daunting task. Here are the three critical front office functionalities investment managers should consider when looking for a new system.
Investment Rules
When applying models to clients and portfolios with nuanced requirements, your system should be capable of enforcing equivalents and substitutions without requiring a completely new model. This is especially valuable when you manage hundreds or hundreds of thousands of portfolios.
In some instances, customers may impose specific restrictions that conflict with the investment strategy behind the model portfolio, such as prohibiting the holding of sin stocks or avoiding positions where a client is already highly concentrated. A robust OMS can automatically incorporate equivalents and substitutions, allowing managers to efficiently swap securities or redistribute market values across accounts with ease. This streamlined process not only reduces manual, bespoke processes but also frees up valuable time for managers to focus on what really matters: generating alpha.
Smart Compliance
In an increasingly investor and policy regulated industry, solutions offering basic compliance capabilities won't cut it anymore.
Investment managers need to be able to create compliance rules easily and quickly while tracking compliance in real-time across asset classes, ideally on a single screen. In addition to rule libraries that reflect the latest industry regulations, your OMS should allow you to build your own rules with easy-to-use templates for exposure, benchmarks, restrictions, and more. These rules should efficiently prompt the user to take action, run at different points in the trading process, and allow for post-trade checks. Additionally, compliance rules should also support soft and hard restrictions, automatically trigger workflows when violations occur, and offer full visibility into audit trails and reporting.
Seamless Connectivity
Interoperability and connectivity are essential components of modern investment management technology. By adopting this model, firms can enhance their technology features without the need for extensive upgrades, allowing for smaller, incremental changes that minimize disruption.
Front office tools within a single platform like SS&C’s Genesis eliminates the need for firms to juggle between disparate systems, providing a unified investment experience with a single vendor for different users, firm types and investment approaches. Additionally, API connectivity enables seamless information exchange not only with a firm’s current systems but also with external counterparties, introducing new ways to work with vendors, partners, third party software, brokers, and peers.
Selecting The Right Provider
Firms looking to advance their digital transformation to enhance operations and efficiencies will find that addressing front office capabilities is one of the most impactful exercises for the broader business.
However, choosing the right provider starts with finding one that offers deep domain expertise and a forward-looking innovation roadmap that matches your firm’s growth goals. Vendors that can create a seamless, connected front-to-back experience that leverages the scalability, interoperability, and flexibility of the cloud offer the capabilities and connectivity you need.
SS&C’s Genesis platform exemplifies this connected approach, allowing investment managers to keep pace with the dynamic fluctuations of the financial industry while setting the foundation for operational transformation. As firms transition from outdated systems to fully integrated cloud solutions, they can maintain robust capabilities without compromising flexibility.
This unique combination of deep industry expertise, innovative technology, and a steadfast commitment to client success is what sets SS&C apart. Whether you're seeking a complete partner for your technology stack, like the Genesis platform, or a standalone best-in-class trading solution, SS&C offers the flexibility you need to grow your firm your way.
Explore how the Genesis platform and SS&C can support your front-office transformation.
