Pioneer Investments implements LatentZero

Pioneer Investments ist implementing LatentZero within a project called GISP, which is "a multi-year project working with various Pioneer business units to develop a standardized global platform for front-office operations including the ability to manage financial instruments and newly created funds by rationalizing the management of corporate data and securities registers".

Amongst the areas being set up is one called PFO (Pioneer Front Office), which takes care of the implementation of LatentZero for order management and investment compliance.

I wonder if the implementation in Germany will work as expected, since this is the first implementation of LatentZero in Germany. And the German investment restrictions are most likely the most complex in the world.

Also, maintaining two rule sets for investment compliance (one for pre-trade in LatentZero and one for post-trade in SimCorp Dimension) can be a massive overhead.

Report on Order Management Systems

This report by CAPIS (Capital Institutional Services), done in 2007, shows a nice overview of funtionalities of Order Management Systems, as well as an overview of them with a detail fact sheet per system.

The report covers systems that have a rather big footprint in the USA and is far from being complete, but the information listed per system is superb although more or less taken from the vendors fact sheets (for most of the given information).

The functionalities being expected in an order management system (from CAPIS' point of view):

• Portfolio Management (normally not an integral part of an OMS but a system group of its own)
  
• Compliance
• Trading
• Fix (considered to be a separate functionality group, in my opinion a general order routing functionality)
• Allocation
  

Systems listed are:

• Advent - Moxy
• SS&C - Antares
• Bloomberg - POMS
• Charles River - CRIMS
• Eze Castle
• Fidessa - LatentZero
• INDATA
• LineData - LongView
• MacGregor - XIP
• Sungard - Asset Arena (formerly known as Decalog)
  

Buy-Side Technology Awards 2007

In addition to the article already published here, here are the detailed results of the technology awards of the "Buy Side Technology":

• Best buy-side OMS - Charles River IMS
• Best buy-side EMS - Fidessa LatentZero Minerva EMS
• Best buy-side algorithmic/DMA product - Goldman Sachs GSAT
• Best buy-side risk analytics product - Imagine Trading System
• Best buy-side performance measurement & attribution product - Statpro SPA v5
• Best buy-side commodities trading platform/service - Trading Technologies X_Trader
• Best buy-side pricing/valuation service - Markit
• Best buy-side data management product - Citadel Associates CADIS
• Best data provider to the buy side - Rimes Technologies SmartFiles
• Best buy-side portfolio analytics product - Sophis VALUE
• Best buy-side integrated front-office platform - Charles River IMS
• Best buy-side portfolio accounting platform - Advent Geneva
• Best buy-side client reporting platform - Advent APX
• Best broker-supplied tool/technology to the buy side - BNY Convergex APEX
• Best buy-side newcomer (vendor or product) - Derivative Fitch RAP CD
• Best in-house developed or proprietary technology - UBS Delta
• Best overall buy-side technology vendor 2007 – Advent

The selection of most products may have been expected or are at least not surprising, from my point of view. The selection of Advent as the "Best overall buy-side technology vendor 2007" and even more so Advent Geneva as "Best buy-side portfolio accounting platform" is at least surprising to me. Has this been a worldwide selection ?

Aquin Components stellt LawCard® für InvG 2008 vor

MIG21, wohl klarer Marktführer für Anlagegrenzkontrollsysteme in Deutschland, bekommt die durch die Änderungen im Gesetztestext InvG notwendig gewordenen neuen Regeln im Rahmen der neuen Version der von Aquin sogenannten "LawCard" verpasst.

Immer wieder versuchen Anbieter aus dem primär angelsächsischen Bereich (z.B. LatentZero oder LineData) in Deutschland mit Ihren Compliance-Systemen Fuß zu fassen - was Ihnen aber bestenfalls im Zusammenspiel mit den hauseigenen Order Management Systemen gelingt (für den pre- und post-trade-Check, aber nicht für den post-booking-Check), aber nicht im Rahmen einer Best-Of-Breed-Strategie.

Bei integrierten Systemen haben - in Bezug auf Anlagegrenzkontrolle - in Deutschland auch wohl nach wie vor Simcorp Dimension oder zunehmend auch ProfiData die Nase vorn.

Global portfolio systems market expanding

This article on "The Trade News" reports on the increasing market for global portfolio management systems, based on a report by the Aite Group.

I am very curious to see the German KAG (investment) market in the next years, in other words the buy side: will they continue to increase the STP rate, will they implement more portfolio and order management systems ? Time will tell...anyhow, the sell side is getting ready to connect, as this example shows: Fidessa and LatentZero combine execution management platforms.

Innovation Awards

Financial-i has identified the winners for 2006 in several categories, defined by an impressive number of analysts and consulters. Amongst the categories is "The most innovative fund administration and accounting solution". The winner is: SunGard, and they are referring to...InvestOne (not V3 or GP3)! You may want to have a look into my other post here (in German), where I have reflected on Sungards strategy in Germany.

Interesting sidemark: The company to watch was identified to be IGEFI. What does its CEO Bertil Rouveure focus on as the differentiation product feature is his note there ? "However, its outstanding feature is the ability to comprehensively service both mutual fund and hedge fund requirements. "

Other memorable awards are:

The most innovative order management solution: Charles River.f Company to watch: LatentZero

The most innovative securities services provider in Europe: BNP Paribas. Company to watch: RBC Dexia Investor Services

The most innovative reference data solution: Asset Control. Company to watch: Capco

You can find the awards in detail as a PDF here.

Dauerhafte Dynamik im Markt für Frontend-Software

In diesem Artikel des Magazins "Portfolio Aktuell" (um ihn vollständig zu lesen muss man sich einloggen) wird auf die Anforderungen an die Software-Lösungen für Order-Management, Compliance, Risiko-Management und Meldewesen eingegangen; dabei werden Produkte von SAP, Charles River, SimCorp, LatentZero und Aquin kurz beschrieben. Allerdings springt der Artikel sehr und hat keinen klaren Fokus - und wirklich neues bietet er nicht.