Guest Contributor: Sally Yates, Head of Influence, Metia Tap in Magic Quadrant into Google and up pops a raft of press releases happily announcing the ‘winners’ in the latest two by two grid wars. Like them or loathe them, MQs have become a bit of a holy grail. Rarely do you come across a fintech
What is series
“What Is” an Exchange?
A key component of financial services is the buying and selling of investment instruments—chief among them is the trading of equity also known as stocks. The meeting place for buyers and sellers is an exchange, defined as a marketplace for trading a wide variety of financial instruments. The function of an exchange is to allow
Guest Blog
Wealth Managers Look to New Service Models for 2013 and Beyond
Guest Contributor: Cheryl Nash, President, Investment Services, Fiserv 2012 was a turnaround year for the wealth management industry. Coming out of the prior crisis, last year was a period of regaining control for advisory firms — revisiting practices, revamping processes, implementing new technology and restoring investors’ faith— to regain growth and better serve clients. Firms
What is series
“What Is” Performance Measurement?
Performance measurement is the process by which investors and others collect and examine information about financial services firms and their capabilities to make a profit. In general, the performance measurement department of a financial services firm such as a hedge fund or an asset manager is responsible for aggregating investment data and producing reports about
Back-Office
Lean and Efficient Best Practices: Utilities, Shared Services and Centres of Excellence in Reconciliations
Guest Contributor: David Penney, Executive Vice President , SmartStream Technologies Ltd Reconciliations are an essential part of back office processing throughout financial services and markets. Experience with our customers leads to the conclusion that Internal Utilities are already well established with a Centre of Excellence as best practice. I am convinced Shared Service Centres are
Dodd-Frank
“What is” a Hedge Fund
A hedge fund is a private partnership investment fund that uses complex investment strategies with the goal of maximizing returns on the funds’ underlying investments. Accredited investors run hedge funds and pool money in order to make risky, yet profitable investments. Therefore, despite the fact that “hedging” implies risk reduction, hedge funds tend to be
Guest Blog
Why Not T+0?
Guest Contributor: Jeremiah J. O’Connell, Chief Executive Officer & senior principal, Jeremiah Associates LLC The global industry is once again exploring the ideal settlement cycle. This has been a focus since an earlier change to T+3. The motivation for change is that a shorter interval of time between trade-settlement dates reduces the risks and costs
Fun Friday
“What Is” The Flash Crash?
The Flash Crash, which happened after 2:30 pm EST on May 6, 2010, was a sudden, massive drop and recovery in securities prices. During the crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 1,000 points and bounced back within 20 minutes. The Flash Crash ranks as the biggest one-day, point decline in the Dow’s
Uncategorized
“What Is” the Sell Side?
The sell side consists of financial services firms such as broker-dealers, investment banks and market makers that offer securities and investment services to money managers working on behalf of pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies, also known as the buy side. The sell side can offer a wide variety of financial instruments. The sell
Uncategorized
Outsourcing Data Management and Performance Measurement to Minimize Operational Risk
Guest Contributor: Jamie Verrengia, Senior Vice President at DST Global Solutions & Arthur Fryar, Global Product Manager – Investment Performance, Attribution & Data Management Solutions, DST Global Solutions The importance of a firm’s performance measurement team, from the output they produce, to their ability to interpret results, is growing at a rapid pace under today’s
