Get geared for complexity

How to effectively handle an increasing number of investment opportunities

The investment industry is a sector experiencing a substantial increase in controls and regulations. Unfortunately, the investment industry is also an environment typically overwhelmed with shadow IT. Typically, a setup consists of various systems such as trading systems, accounting risk and portfolio management, as well as a notable amount of complicated Excel spreadsheets. Essentially, this creates an assortment of systems not originally designed to ‘talk’ to each other reliably and securely.

This type of setup poses major problems, and the challenges increase exponentially with the growing complexity of investment opportunities. For example, alternative investments – an accelerating asset class – adds significantly to the complexity.

These emerging investment opportunities put immense pressure on the data acted and traded on, which is also required to provide a real-time picture of everything from investment strategy to exposure and risk. At the same time, investment managers in the Pension and Insurance sector face rising challenges in terms of data management and reporting, as both investors and supervisors have raised their standards regarding the quality and quantity of the information reported.

So how do you make sure you’re geared and prepared for the complexity?

You prepare by implementing a setup that can help you manage and reduce complexity, all while scaling your business through increased regulatory supervision of the sector, increased number of asset classes and investment opportunities: a solution where most time-consuming things are streamlined, simplified and automated.

Read on to learn about the benefits within reach with a flexible and efficient investment management solution, such as Vitec Aloc’s PORTMAN solution, and see how you can utilize it for your own business.

#1 Get easier reporting

Being an investment manager, it is important to maintain an overview of your investments, however, the challenges of managing and controlling investments, exposures and risks have never been greater.

In particular, administration and compliance tasks are often draining assignments that take precious resources away from business development activities. For example, accounting and reporting can take an exorbitant amount of time without a proper setup. It’s not uncommon for the process of generating annual financial figures to take several weeks, especially if you work with shadow IT or other types of systems not integrated or automatically updated.

The challenges increase exponentially as the complexity of investment opportunities grows year after year.

Fortunately, scalability becomes much easier with an efficient, modular investment management solution like PORTMAN. In reality, reporting can often be reduced to 1-2 days, meaning you can quickly and easily implement new modules or invest in new asset classes without it demanding significantly more of your time; and that internal cost can then be spent on generating revenue and growth rather than maintaining heavy manual processes.

#2 Free up resources for activities that create added value

Additionally, having a flexible investment management solution also pertains to your ability to free up resources as many processes are now automated. In this way, more time is freed up for core tasks, costs associated with administration tasks are reduced, and resources associated with heavy systems or manual processes are minimized.

Inefficient processes and workflows mean more complexity that requires many more hands, and the cost to hire in this industry is only going up.

#3 Achieve operational execution security

Making investments on a flawed or inaccurate database is any investment manager’s nightmare.

A vital step in eliminating error reporting is ensuring the data quality is accurate and trustworthy. Fortunately, you can ensure this with an effective investment management solution. With the right solution, you ensure that the most up-to-date, trusted numbers form the basis of your investments.

Above providing more security and efficiency, this creates peace of mind knowing that the database is correct and creates an efficient organisation as data comes in quickly, correctly and is processed and continuously calculated. Plus, knowing system security and data validation are in order can create a solid foundation for further processing of data and reporting.

In other words, you get greater operational execution security because you get a system that automatically validates the data for your most effective use.

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#4 Become less person dependent

The high demands of data quality, the availability of data and real-time overviews of exposures, risks and returns place great demands on the technological infrastructure of a company.

With an efficient and scalable platform, you can secure your setup for the future, so you can meet today’s high demands as well as stay better prepared for future regulations or alternative investment opportunities.

When manual processes are automated, time is released for analysis, insight and process optimisation; all this while the company becomes less dependent on staff as accurate data is sent to relevant functions automatically.

#5 Better governance of alternative investments

Alternative investments continue to gain more and more traction in the Pension and Insurance segment and becoming a new standard in the industry. It’s worth mentioning alternative investments can help to support the societal role pension funds have concerning the assurance of future pensioners’ standard of living; this is only aided by the ‘green’ transition that is in rapid development throughout the world.

The challenge is that many do not have the necessary infrastructure and procedures to handle these types of investments, resulting in the value of the investment being unnecessary, time-consuming and less efficient to calculate. Unfortunately, if the value and transparency of an investment cannot be calculated, the capital requirement being tied up is increased.

And even worse, if there is no control over the data in connection with alternative investments, you risk penalties from the Financial Supervisory Authorities, or can even be forced to refrain from investing in the lucrative asset class. It can be an expensive endeavor to enter into an investment only to find out that you are exceeding the investment limit, especially if it is illiquid investments such as alternative investments.

With a secure investment management solution—such as PORTMAN—you can achieve improved and trusted governance with alternative investments, through employing the technological infrastructure necessary to master the increasing complexity of investment opportunities; a decision many have been making as of late.

PORTMAN – an automated and complete front-to-back system support for your investment environment

Do you also find alternative investments to be a critical component of your future investment strategy?

Our PORTMAN solution is a recognized investment management solution that supports the critical business processes of our customers every single day.

We understand the complexity and help you streamline it with our PORTMAN solution, built of modules so that you can customise your setup to stay secure for all future requirements and complexities. If or when this happens, you can simply subscribe to the module you need for the next step of your business expansion and protection.

With PORTMAN for Pension and Insurance you receive:

enablement to free up time with automation and streamlining of work processes
support of all widespread asset classes, including a dedicated Alternative Investments module
flexibility with our API for interaction with PORTMAN for i.e. a data warehouse or your tailor-made dashboards

Shall we talk more about the possibilities?