BANKING AND CAPITAL MARKETS

With the emergence of new digital economy, it is imperative for financial institutions to keep pace. Operating at the intersect of emerging technologies, we drive collaborative transformation across Retail and Corporate Banking, and Asset and Wealth Management for larger, established players as well as Fintechs.

Asset and Wealth Management firms continue to do business in a complex marketplace. Our broad range of capabilities across the lifecycle help our clients deliver best-in-class digital experiences much faster.

Asset Management – Consulting Services

The complexity of the asset management market has increased, standardizations have been introduced, markets and their asset managers have become more international. Since its inception, ACE IT, has been part of this development and has grown professionally and technically with it.

Due to the tasks and objectives of the asset manager the requirements for the asset management differ considerably, which is reflected in the different requirements on the functions in the software used itself, in the technical processes, in functional accounting, in risk controlling, but in particular also in the requirements on the (regulatory) reporting.

ACE IT knows the differences in the requirements through decades of experience in the market, and immediately understands what being an asset manager is all about. Whether it is

• a capital management company that sells public funds or institutional investors with special funds or free mandates,
• an insurance company that directly manages its asset management, or an insurance group that assigns the asset management activities for all units centrally to its own asset management company or an external asset manager,
• all the way to requirements in a bank itself,
• as well as custodian banks as a depositary and supervisory body.

 

Front to Back Office

What exactly is asset management? The term can be broadly used. If one speaks only of securities trading, it includes the settlement and administration of the securities or one can also understand asset management as the accounting of securities, either in the context of a subsidiary ledger with a company (e.g. insurance) or the fund accounting of a capital management company, as well as the different reporting requirements, which result from the legal form of the asset manager.

ACE IT understands asset management as a front-to-back requirement. This means from the analysis of the selection of the securities to be invested in, to the preparation of the annual financial statements and the associated reports, and thus all process steps that an asset manager goes through in the day-to-day business.

As part of numerous implementation and optimization projects, ACE IT supports its customers along all processes front to back in planning and implementation in order to implement their strategic and tactical decisions operationally. Accordingly, a project in asset management for ACE IT includes the view and implementation of the requirements across the entire operational process chain, no matter which operational or technical strategy the customer has or chooses on an organizational basis. Whether it is an IBOR / ABOR architecture (investment book of records and accounting book of records), a best-of-breed solution or a wall-to-wall solution within the organization of the company.

Depending on the approach, whether wall-to-wall (technical implementation of all processes of the value chain in one system), best-of-breed (technically separate processes in specialized software, technical illustration of the process and implementation of a high degree of automation by means of interfaces) or separation between IBOR and ABOR, different requirements for an implementation project arise.

One approach may make more sense than the other, depending on the tasks and requirements of an asset manager. ACE IT is not rigid about a specific approach but looks at each customer individually and then assesses with the customer what the best approach is to enable the customer to operate its business efficiently, with high quality and optimized costs. Clearly, the approach must fit in with the IT strategy of the parent companies so far as they are not completely independent asset managers.

Accordingly, ACE IT has a very good track record in the implementation of interface-driven best-of-breed solutions as well as in the implementation of the very process-driven approach of a wall-to-wall solution.

ACE IT customers benefit from the fact that we can offer services and support through the complete life cycle of a project. ACE IT does not consider itself to be a pure system implementer, but as an expert partner of implementation projects. We support our clients during all processes in the implementation of a project:

• Selection process of a solution
• Project planning and organizing the implementation of the associated project management during the project
• Drafting of professional requirements concepts
• Composing concepts for realization and implementation in the system based on existing laws, expert opinions or test reports
• Implementation of the concepts in the system in the form of system configuration, interfaces, reports etc. front to back
• Migration of data to the system to be implemented with appropriate tools for extracting from the legacy system, data conversion, import into the new system and all coordination activities
• Design and definition of the new business and technical processes oriented towards the organizational structure of the asset manager
• Organization, management and execution of the test cycles consisting of a prototype/developer test, an integrative system test and professional test with the relevant specialist areas
• Support for production start-up and aftercare in the production environment

Based on the decades of experience gained by ACE IT employees in very large as well as complex implementation projects, ACE IT has proven methods and the best practices to lead implementation projects along the path to success.