$100B Asset Manager Modernizes Infrastructure to Support Rapid Growth

Since 2008, our client has experienced substantial growth from $30B to nearly $100B by winning mandates of new clients with highly customized requirements. As part of this growth, the firm streamlined its product strategy and operating model in support of three strategic investment offerings: high yield, municipal, and global fixed income.

With an operating and technology model sized for its pre-growth state, the client struggled to meet the current and future needs of the business. Significant investment was needed for platforms in desperate need of upgrade. These systems had gaps within their data and integration architecture and forced users to adopt manual processes. The legacy operating model presented a significant operational risk to the firm and was constraining its ability to efficiently and effectively scale the business. In addition to the challenges in running the day to day operation, the client had limited operational and technology resources to address its challenges.

The project

The firm's leadership team recognized the need to modernize its operating model and infrastructure in order to meet its current and future growth trajectory. The team developed a set of mandates designed to address its operations and technology challenges:

• Eradicate manual processes in the operating model
• Update existing technology and address gaps with new best of breed solutions
• Unwind non-scalable workarounds built within legacy platforms

The client engaged Citisoft to perform a high-level review of its middle and back office investment operations, focusing on people, process, and technology. As part of this review, Citisoft proposed and implemented a four-year strategic roadmap to modernize the client's operations and technology. The roadmap included the upgrade of its investment accounting platform and the selection and implementation of solutions which satisfied the mandate above for data management, reconciliation, trade operations, collateral management, bank loan processing, and reporting.

In addition to the operational and technology roadmap, Citisoft advised the client on the organizational changes required to transition into its future state. This included the repositioning of its systems support team, the redesign of its technology organization, and realignment of its operations team.

Citisoft supported the organization throughout the roadmap implementation by providing project management, business
analysis, and subject matter expertise. Our resources were able to work side-by-side with key client personnel, allowing them to continue to support day-to-day responsibilities and alleviating the bandwidth issues constraining the organization.

The result

Citisoft led the delivery of the future state design on schedule and under budget.

With the strategic architecture in place, the client has transformed from a manually intensive environment heavily centered around a depreciated accounting platform into an integrated multi-platform model whereby best of breed solutions are integrated in a built for purpose, automated, and scalable model.

The client now has the ability to acquire, cleanse, and process data in an automated, controlled, and scalable manner. Manual processes to obtain, transform, and process reference, market, custodial, and trade data have been eliminated. By gaining efficiencies with these systems, the client has been able to support its growth without the operational risks prevalent in its former legacy operating model.

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