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For those who know me outside of work, you know I’m a runner and always training for the next race. In distance running, elite athletes don’t start with race day strategy. They start with an honest assessment of current capability. Pace, endurance, recovery, and risk are measured before the plan is set. Organizations rarely apply
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Architecting for Total Portfolio Approach
“Architecture is about the important stuff. Whatever that is.” – Ralph Jophnson. While Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) and Total Portfolio Approach (TPA) are both investment philosophies, they require fundamentally different architectures to support them. Most asset owners do not struggle because of the allocation approach they choose. They struggle because the systems, data structures, and design decisions
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Bridging Two Worlds: The Modern Analyst’s Role in Investment Operations
Starting out as a consulting analyst in 2025, I can’t help but notice how different my experience is from those who entered the field a generation ago. In the 1990s, entry-level analysts spent their first few months balancing ledgers by hand, keying data into green-screen terminals, and learning the quirks of rigid mainframe systems. They
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The Challenges and Complexities Facing Today’s Pension Plans
The role of the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) within pension plans has evolved significantly in recent years. No longer focused solely on portfolio construction and return generation, today’s CIO must navigate an environment shaped by data, technology, and a growing set of external pressures. The long-term sustainability, funding of pension systems, and the financial security
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Fluent, Not Smart: What Large Language Models Really Mean for Asset Management
In our first article, Are You Ready for AI?, we explained how true AI readiness is less about chasing the latest tools and more about achieving operational maturity. Firms that succeed start with clean data, sound processes, and strong governance; the foundation quality is what determines whether AI delivers value or magnifies flaws. This second
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Inside the Conversation: Meradia and State Street on Regulatory Readiness and Operational Change
Today, collaboration and knowledge sharing are more critical than ever. Recently, Meradia’s Laurie Hesketh, CIPM and Mick Cartwright, CIPM joined forces with Ian Hissey and Peter Sherriff from Charles River Development, a State Street Company, for an exclusive knowledge sharing session. Together, these experts explored the challenges and opportunities facing asset owners and investment firms
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From Data to Decisions: Leveraging Your Total Portfolio View
In recent articles, we’ve examined why delivering an effective Total Portfolio View (TPV) is difficult, the data obstacles firms face, and why an Investment Book of Record (IBOR) often plays a key component in constructing your TPV. I’d like to step back and consider the utility a TPV delivers. It is not simply the accumulation
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Understanding the Divide Between Multi Asset Classes and Total Portfolio View
Executive Summary Despite broad adoption of digital technology across investment operations, corporate actions processing remains one of the most manual, error-prone functions in the industry. Complexity, fragmented data, and outdated systems contribute to inefficiencies, heightened risk, and strained collaboration between operations and portfolio management teams. As the demand for timely elections and accurate reporting grows,
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The Role of Automation in Operational Efficiency for Asset Managers
Asset managers have always depended on people-intensive processes to handle trading, reporting, reconciliation, and compliance. Those processes once worked, but today they are cracking under the pressure of fee compression, accelerated settlement cycles, and the growing complexity of private markets. What used to be occasional exceptions are now daily operational risks. Automation is no longer
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Recap of ‘The Reality of Modernizing Investment Operations’ with Meradia and FundGuard
Rethinking Transformation in Investment Management Meradia recently co-hosted a webinar with FundGuard exploring the reality of modernizing investment operations. Too often, “transformation” gets reduced to a technology upgrade, but without addressing underlying operating models, firms risk spending heavily without achieving real long-term value. Meradia’s Chris Cassara and FundGuard’s Kirk Littleton shared how firms can move
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