New York (HedgeCo.Net) – For the fourth consecutive year, Eze Castle Integration has surveyed a section of the investment management community to understand the systems and service providers funds are working with to achieve these best practices and attract investors.
Eze Castle Integration surveyed 279 firms worldwide – across the United States, United Kingdom and Asia. The majority of respondents classified themselves as hedge funds (58%). Other firm types surveyed included investment/asset manager (13%), private equity firm (3%), fund of fund (3%), and family office (3%). Additionally, 13 percent fell into an “Other” category which included financial firm types such as venture capital, advisory, fund management, quant and wealth management.
Market Data & Analytics: Bloomberg continues to lead the pack (96%) as far as market data services and analytics in the financial industry.
Front Office: The majority of firms rely on Eze Software Group’s Eze OMS, followed by Bloomberg’s Asset and Investment Manager (AIM), RediPlus EMS and Advent’s Moxy.
Research & Document Management: The majority of respondents reported that they outsource the responsibility of managing research materials and documentation. Forty-three percent (43%) of firms are using in-house or proprietary solutions. For those firms using a specific tool, Microsoft’s SharePoint, Advent’s Tamale, or Code Red RMS are the most common.
Portfolio Accounting: Advent Software continues to be the primary leader in regards to portfolio accounting with its Geneva and APX solutions remaining the top two choices among investment firms surveyed.
Risk Management: Adoption of risk management solutions is still slow as a reported fifty-six percent (56%) are not using solutions to mitigate portfolio risk. For those firms that do have a formal solution in place, popular vendors utilized include Advent, Bloomberg, FT Options, Indus Valley, iVolitility, Orchestrade and The Insight.
Outsourced Administration: While not all firms choose to utilize an outsourced fund administrator for more comprehensive services, those that do tend to work with a variety of different vendors. Citco is the top administrator choice among our survey respondents, followed by SS&C GlobeOp, Northern Trust, State Street and JP Morgan.
Customer Relationship Management: In regards to CRM tools, our survey results found that Backstop is the most popular solution, followed by Salesforce.com and Petrac.
Message Archiving: A large majority of survey respondents (57%) are relying on Global Relay for their email and IM message archiving services, followed by Eze Castle’s Eze Archive service, which is powered by Global Relay. Smarsh and Frontbrige round out the top four services.
Mobile Technology: Firms are using BlackBerry (83%) as their primary mobile solution. However, iPhone use has made great leaps and increased from forty-three percent (43%) in 2013 to sixty-four percent (64%) in 2014.
Firms surveyed fell into three asset groups: thirty-three percent (33%) reported their assets under management (AUM) as less than $100 million; twenty-eight percent (28%) fell between $101 and $500 million; and the majority (39%) reported over $500 million AUM.
Editing by Alex Akesson
For HedgeCo.net
alex@hedgeco.net
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