Sponsored: The Fondbar partner - SS&C Advent
SS&C Advent is partnering with Tell Media Group for our Fondbar event in Stockholm on February 13, 2019. We touched base with Andre Vanem, regional director, Northern Europe, to learn more about the company and what are the issues currently occupying their clients’ thoughts.
Who is SS&C Advent?
“We are a leading provider of solutions and services to the investment management community. Our solutions and services help clients make better-informed decisions, work more productively, serve their clients more effectively, manage and minimize risks and comply with the ever-changing and complex regulatory landscape. Today, we are an independent business unit in SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ: SSNC), the largest transfer agent and fund administrator globally that is managing their book of business on Advent Software solutions.”
For how long have you been active in the Nordic region?
“Since 1998 and we have a strong local presence and commitment towards our over 60 clients based in the region. Our team of around 60 employees cover both local and global needs and requirements from offices in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo.”
What is the most successful product/service in the Nordics?
“We cover a wide range of solutions and services supporting the entire investment management process for investment managers. We cover all areas of the value chain - from front to back - as well as most industry segments such as wealth managers, institutional investors, fund managers, hedge funds and fund distributors. We are particularly strong when complexity increases and when our clients cover multiple ‘lines of businesses’ and hence must manage both complexity as well as scale. We have a very strong multi-channel client servicing solution including a Transfer Agency (TA) solution. We also have the world leading systems for hedge funds and alternative managers.”
What are your ambitions in the Nordic region going forward?
“We have a clear ambition of continuous growth and expansion of our solution footprint. Our goal is to make it as simple as possible for our clients, by providing innovative industry leading software solutions combined with outsourced services from cloud delivered solutions to outsourced operational tasks and procedures. We continue to invest in next products and services, such as our new portfolio construction tool – Genesis. Our ambitions are both to welcome new clients onto Advent and to continue to help our existing clients grow and thrive.”
Who are your typical clients in the Nordic region?
“As mentioned earlier, we cover a wide range of client profiles, everything from family offices, private banking, discretionary asset managers, advisory firms or institutional and fund management clients. We hence cover clients from SEK 500 million (EUR 48.1 million) to several billions in AUM, serving clients with everything from 1 investment mandate or fund to clients who serve over 1 million end-clients and portfolios.”
Which questions/worries are top of mind among your clients right now?
“Our clients, like the general investment community, are concerned about margin-pressure and the cost of doing business in an environment of constant change. They are looking to evolve their operating models to be increasingly digital and to provide greater client and investor value, whilst pressure on fees will continue to rise. Regulatory perspective, as well as investor and client demands, are fuelling an expectation of greater transparency and increased timeliness and depth of information. Clients want more for less and investment and wealth managers need to provide more with less. The use of technology and outsourcing is key to this evolution as firms focus on where they should develop core competencies and where they can benefit from shared costs.
In general, Nordic investment managers have been lagging when it comes to urgency around automation of critical tasks such as electronic order routing and execution. Deploying technology to transform operations and efficiency is of crucial importance to most firms at present. We are on top of these challenges and invest more than USD 80 million (EUR 70.1 million) annually in R&D within Advent alone in order to make sure our clients can stay ahead of the curve.”
Are there topics/themes that the industry should be focusing more on right now?
“Firms are facing an ever-changing world where fees and returns are likely to be lower for longer than they have experienced for a long time. Markets and society are also increasingly volatile, which creates new challenges and both opportunities and threats to existing strategies and approaches. The proliferation of legacy technologies and working practices is still an issue in many cases. The industry needs to invest in adopting best practices, based upon technology and exception processing. The potential for robotic processing automation (RPA) tools, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, distributed ledger technology (DTL) and other emerging technologies is huge. However, managers need to look at these through new lenses and consider how to utilise this potential to transform the business and avoid the pitfalls of reinventing their current practice in a different technology.
The speed and ability to change is something investment managers need to consider. Historically the industry has been consciously conservative and change adverse. This culture needs to evolve to be able to bring more nimble businesses and adapt to market opportunities. Many firms talk about being ‘agile’ but without really embracing the cultural adoption and re-aligning their business models for tomorrow’s opportunities.”
