Next-generation portfolio and risk solutions are capturing a larger share of the value chain in order to achieve greater alignment, collaboration, and convergence between front office investment functions.
In the report Portfolio Analytics and Risk Management Solutions for the Buy Side: Storm-Proofing for Growth and Resilience, Celent examines current and emerging solution capabilities for next-generation portfolio and risk systems.
Asset owners, asset managers, and service providers are demanding robust risk management systems to achieve a total view across broader asset classes to increase diversification and transparency into investment performance and risk characteristics, while the industry employs more sophisticated investment strategies to limit downside risks and enhance returns.
At the same time, ongoing changes in investment approaches and how portfolios are constructed will require fund managers to move towards true multiasset portfolio and risk solution capabilities based on a consistent portfolio construction and risk analysis framework, and to address operational limitations to handle multiple strategies: active, passive, quantitative, and/or blended.
In response, vendors have made significant movements in the value chain of investment and risk management. Most vendors are attempting to expand outside their traditional positioning due to the need for greater alignment, collaboration, and convergence between front office investment functions and middle office / enterprise risk management. Investment management firms are also driving efforts to consolidate systems to achieve a consistent view of risk between front and middle offices.
“Next-generation portfolio and risk solutions are likely to exhibit strong, hybrid competencies to deliver integrated portfolio and risk analytics, which align CIO and CRO activity chains,” says Cubillas Ding, Research Director with Celent’s Securities & Investments Group and author of the report. “Although the change is slow, we expect the tradeoffs that buy side investment and risk operations have to put up with will eventually be less pronounced.”
This report is the second installment of a series on portfolio and investment risk practices, technology, and operations. The study analyzes and ranks 12 vendors and their buy side solutions for portfolio and risk management featuring Celent’s ABCD Vendor View, which presents a comparative view of the vendor marketplace that visually represents four elements: Advanced technology, Breadth of functionality, Customer base, and Depth of client services.
The vendors profiled in this report include: Axioma, Barclays POINT, DST Global Solutions, IBM Algorithmics, Misys Sophis, MSCI Barra/Riskmetrics, Northfield, Quantifi, S&P Capital IQ, State Street, SunGard APT, and Wilshire Associates.
