Performance and Attribution Capabilities Audit for a Global Asset Servicing Company

BACKGROUND

Meradia’s client, a global asset servicing company, acquired a European asset servicing firm, which included a middle-office software vendor. The software vendor served both the newly acquired European asset servicing business and had independent clients. Meradia was engaged to identify and evaluate ways our client could leverage this newly acquired software asset. Options included: selling the software and technology arm, leveraging the vendor platform as a new foundation to replace aging North American infrastructure, and integrating this new platform into its overall product strategy focusing its use on a particular product segment. The vendor’s performance and attribution capabilities were of primary interest.

ACTIVITY AND APPROACH

  • Accelerated analysis by leveraging Meradia’s standard investment performance and attribution RFP framework to quickly identify capabilities of North American architecture.
  • Created catalog of global and local performance and attribution requirements.
  • Compared platform technology and architecture requirements with global firm’s platform, direction and policies.
  • Conducted regional workshops with both operational and executive teams.
  • Delivered assessment and next steps recommendations to stakeholder group.
  • Identified key target outcomes for the next phase of the program.

RESULTS

  • Global site visits revealed large pockets of unexpected needs that were not met by internal legacy platforms or the acquired vendor.
  • Product strength and weakness assessment including heat matrix for requirements and capabilities drove prioritized recommendations.
  • Platform convergence would have necessitated large investments in either platform. Meradia helped the client create a product roadmap to right-size product offerings with an appropriate performance technology backbone that would meet the operational efficiency demands of the North American market as well as the local specific use case needs. The newly acquired software asset fit well into an overall product strategy as the legacy platform was deficient in serving wealth segments.

MERADIA’S VALUE ADD

Meradia’s industry expertise and perspective was critical, including how a system handles something like classification structures or non-business month-ends, which reveals much about underlying constraints. Knowledge of software and operating model best practices were an additional benchmark against which to measure system capabilities. As a third party with domain expertise, Meradia bridged cultural differences and gained the trust and cooperation of multiple local teams, each of which had their own agenda.

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