Barrington: The Global PA Report 2012

Yet another Barrington report on fund accounting systems ("Portfolio Accounting"is the preferred term there and explicitly used as a synonym). With Germany and Switzerland (2 out of 10 named countries that should cover the entire planet) one would expect that the systems with a significant footprint in German speaking countries would be included. However, I wasn't able to find neither Profidata nor Diamos (MultiFonds, SimCorp and Sungard are included). The majority of the systems seem to be from North America.

Interestingly, vendors like Murex (MX 3), Temenos (WealthManager) and Thomson Reuters (Portia) are included.

Nevertheless an extensive report and a must-have for anyone in the business.

Barrington: "Portfolio Accounting Systems" Survey 2009

The Barrington Report 2009 on Portfolio Accounting Systems is available now, as usual with a hefty price tag (3000 $). It covers buy and sell side systems, and portfolio management and fund accounting systems.

Not all of the fund accounting systems in use in the German speaking markets are covered: Sungard's GP3 and Profidata's Xentis, oddly enough, are missing. SimCorp's Dimension and IGEFI's MultiFonds is included though. Princeton Financial System's PAM, currently prepared for its release in Germany, is also handled.

The survey says it covers systems also from Germany (in fact, none of the systems are from Germany but used in Germany; the only system being from Germany, Diamos F, is not even mentioned), and altogether 33 systems are reviewed. But by omitting a major player in the German speaking market (for whatever reason) makes this report come up a tad bit short...

The U.S. Fund Accounting Systems Review 2007

Barrington delivers yet again a new research on fund accounting systems in the US (the equivalent latest version of their European counterparts is dated 2003).

The following systems were reviewed:

• Eagle Investment Systems- EagleSTAR
• LineData (GIS)- MFACT
• IGEFI- MultiFonds
• SimCorp- SimCorp Dimension
• State Street Bank- PAS
• SunGard LLC- InvestOne

I just wonder why StateStreet PAS (or PAM) is on there - it is not sold to clients (as much as I know), but part of the service offering at StateStreet.

Obviously, two systems that are originated in Europe seam to be able to get enough attention to be on that exclusive but not exhaustive list: MultiFonds and Dimension. I wonder why systems like MPacs (from Phoenix Systems) or Geneva (from Advent) are not on the list (just to name two).

Link Lists for Investment Systems from Front- to Back-Office

I have compiled lists for fund accounting systems (see the surveys on the resepective topic, here from Barrington), transfer agency (see also the Barrington survey), compliance and order / portfolio management systems and added them as link lists on this blog (displayed on the right side). They will constantly be updated.

You may find other overviews on WallStreetAndTech (in English) and BankersPlus (in German, you might have to register first). Also interesting is the survey from Investment Advisor Association or the general surveys from Celent, or on specific issues on requirements for those systems at SourceMedia.

GCEY and KPMG also do surveys, but the the last publicly available survey on fund accounting systems I found is from 2004.