SunGard; Advent Automate Separate Managed Account Order Flow
SunGard and Advent Software have teamed up to allow managers of wrap accounts to send trade orders to multiple sponsors electronically through SunGard's Global Network (SGN).
"Wrap" managers oversee an investor's portfolio for a flat quarterly or annual fee that covers all administrative, commission and management expenses. These businesses, also known as separately managed account or SMA programs, can be an effective way for asset managers to increase assets and capital.
Currently, asset managers must often manually extract data from their order management systems and upload the information to a wrap sponsor's platform to execute each trade; wait for a confirmation and then allocate the order to each account. All of that communication can take place via fax and proprietary emails with the asset manager often needing to hook up with several sponsors. Making the task more difficult is that they may rely on disparate formats specific to each sponsor, typically a broker-dealer or bank responsible for distributing the SMAs to investors and executing asset managers' orders.
Now through a turnkey link between SGN and Advent’s Moxy order management system, fund managers using the OMS can electronically send trade orders to wrap sponsors using the FIX protocol, a common messaging format for trade orders and allocations. Those sponsors can then send confirmations back to the fund managers from the OMS through SGN to be allocated by the fund managers to individual SMAs. The fund managers and sponsors can communicate bilaterally using the FIX protocol for which SGN supports versions 4.0 and 4.2 as well as custom tags for version 4.4.
"The growth of separately managed account programs is fueling the demand for integrated tools that provide efficiency as account volume increases," says Ralston Roberts, senior managing director for the SunGard Global Network business unit. "SunGard's collaboration with Advent provides a single solution for managing trading and settlement activity, helping customers improve their workflow efficiency and reduce errors and costs."
Written by Chris Kentouris, Editor-in-chief (Chris can be contacted through Chris.Kentouris@hotmail.com)
