Author: Jose Michaelraj

Look Before You Leap: A Risk-Based Framework To Aid Middle- and Back-Office Outsourcing

The consolidation of middle- and back-office outsourcing is gaining popularity across the investment management industry. To date, there have been many debates around the pros and cons of this trend. Whether your firm has already made the decision to outsource or is actively evaluating options, there’s much to consider. How do you know you’ve made the right choice? Have you considered the most important factors? We believe wearing a “special” lens might reveal insights missing in existing discussions, paving the way for a novel method to assess comparable offerings and potentially result in superior outcomes.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, CAIA Senior Consultant…

Read Full Article

Bigger Isn’t Always Better: How Niche Consulting Firms Add Meaningful Value – Part 1

As the famous author Oscar Wilde once said, “The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions.”

This concept can be applied to the broad world of consulting. All consulting firms, regardless of size, are tasked with fulfilling a client’s business objective. They provide requisite guidance and pertinent information at critical decision-making points. However, in a crowded market with many options to choose from, how can you be certain you have the best consultant for the job? It comes down to asking the right questions and understanding your needs. Here, we explore the unique value-add of a niche consulting firm.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, CAIA, Senior Consultant

Read Full Article

How Investment Management Firms Benefit from Engaging the Right Consultant

During an era when critical skills are in short-supply and valuable IT and business personnel spend most of their working hours in meetings, consultants can make the meaningful difference between a project’s success or failure. The right consultant brings diverse skills, broad perspectives and an understanding of both business and technology. In addition, consultants are best positioned to contribute in a way seldom possible by others since they can apply focus and attention to the task at hand – something that is difficult for full time employees to do when they are juggling competing demands and BAU tasks. This article:
• delves into business problems prevalent in many investment management firms, especially in vendor product evaluations and implementations;
• deals with how an outside consultant can play a significant, contributory role; and
• leverages a practical use case to demonstrate key benefits and tangible results delivered by a Meradia consultant who moved an almost failing project to a successful outcome.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, Senior Consultant

Read Full Article

Risk Statistics in Performance Calculators: Suitable and Scalable? – Part 2

Investment performance calculators have witnessed steady growth in functionality during the past couple of decades. Leveraging huge data management platforms that contain exception management and workflow capabilities, calculators provide upstream integration capabilities. By expanding calculation breadth to include attribution effects and risk statistics, they are knocking on front office doors. As vendor consolidation occurs and performance systems endeavor to deliver one-stop solutions, it is important to understand design mechanisms related to each functionality that drives system efficiencies. In this paper, we examine returns and ex-post risk statistics.

Refer to Part 1 of this two-part series which lists the subset of risk statistics with which we are concerned and the benefits of calculating these in a performance calculator.

This Part 2 delves into systemic factors that enable efficient computation of risk statistics and why conventional architectures encounter scaling issues.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, Senior Consultant

Read Full Article

Risk Statistics in Performance Calculators: Suitable and Scalable? – Part 1

Investment performance calculators have witnessed steady growth in functionality during the past couple of decades. Leveraging huge data management platforms that contain exception management and workflow capabilities, calculators provide upstream integration capabilities. By expanding calculation breadth to include attribution effects and risk statistics, they are knocking on front office doors. As vendor consolidation occurs and performance systems endeavor to deliver one-stop solutions, it is important to understand design mechanisms related to each functionality that drives system efficiencies. In this paper, we examine returns and ex-post risk statistics.

This Part 1 of a two-part series lists the subset of risk statistics with which we are concerned and the benefits of calculating these in a performance calculator.

Stay tuned for Part 2 which delves into systemic factors that enable efficient computation of risk statistics and why conventional architectures encounter scaling issues.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, Senior Consultant

Read Full Article
Skip to content