info@meradia.com
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
Read Full Article
After-Tax Benchmark Methodology
After-Tax Benchmarks: A Practical Framework for Measuring Tax Alpha After-tax benchmarks are increasingly critical for evaluating investment performance for taxable investors. While after-tax portfolio returns are well defined under existing standards, the development of consistent, defensible after-tax benchmark methodologies has lagged, creating challenges for firms seeking to accurately measure tax-aware investment strategies. This paper introduces
Read Full Article
System Conversion for a Global Custodial and Service Provider
Background A Global Service provider began a multi-phase implementation for a Global Investment manager to convert them onto their modern outsourced platform. The initiative aimed to enhance operational efficiency while fully supporting their clients increasingly complex global investment strategies. The Challenge Despite a clear strategic objective, the project quickly fell behind. During the initial rollout
Read Full Article
Breaking Down Barriers: Building a Scalable OTC Derivatives Solution from the Ground Up
Background A service provider had long been known for its “white glove” premium service and seamless onboarding experience. But when a recent acquisition introduced new front-to-back capabilities, including modern OMS and IBOR, things began to unravel. The firm had promised clients advanced OTC derivatives functionality, but under the hood, their infrastructure told a different story.
Read Full Article
Trends Impacting Investment Operations, Meradia’s 2025 Viewpoint
SUMMARY A modern Target Operating Model in investment management is no longer a “nice to have” but a necessity in an increasingly competitive, data-driven, and highly regulated landscape. Firms cannot cut their way to success in the marketplace as technological innovation and operational efficiency is the source of future outperformance relative to peers. Firms who
Read Full Article
Bridging Resource Gaps for Successful Investment Performance Implementations
When clients and vendors share responsibility in system implementations, what is at risk of being overlooked? The delineation of duties between clients and vendors can be ambiguous. Resourcing gaps arise when one party assumes that the other party is responsible for a task. These gaps become apparent only after project teams and stakeholders have experienced
Read Full Article
Mastering the Ripple Effect: Key Strategies to Navigate Financial Transformation Challenges
In the financial industry, the sales process can evoke excitement, apprehension, and optimism, often fueled by the promise of change and new innovative solutions. However, the path to lasting success is fraught with potential challenges that, if not addressed early, can create a significant ripple effect. It’s never too late to tackle these transformational challenges, but the earlier you address them, the smaller you can make your ripple. By focusing on three pivotal stages—the sales process, implementation, and post-go-live, you can mitigate risks, reduce the size of your ripple, and ensure a smooth transition into everyday business operations.
Read Full Article
UAT for Performance Transformations Is Notoriously Difficult. It Doesn’t Need To Be.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) can throw projects into a frustrating and mind-numbing stall, which is catastrophic to any transformation. The terror of botching a go-live event with insufficient data commonly leads users into a frenzy of checking, double-checking, approving, re-checking, and reapproving. As the process repeats across test cases, progress toward user confidence seems negligible.
Read Full Article
Revolutionize Investment Operations With AI-Driven Data Catalogs
Are you looking to stand up or revise a data catalog? Is understanding your data one of your company’s goals or principles? Understanding the full scope of your data involves a top-down understanding and a bottom-up inventory. This provides valuable insights into your current state to enable multiple efforts to be launched at your firm, but who has the time? The new methodology developed using AI technology and industry expertise reduced the time and client resources required to inventory data and stand up a catalog to a fraction of the normal amount. In this paper, we share the methodology and tools to help you achieve your firm’s goals both effectively and efficiently.
by Andrew Jacob, CFA, Senior Consultant
Kevin Coffin, CIPM, Zengines, Head of Customer Success
Data-Centric KPIs Enable Effective Management of Investment Performance Operations
Consider the irony… Performance departments exert their time and energy to calculate performance results that inform consumers of the impacts of their decisions on investments. Though Performance executes complex calculations and solves firm-wide data challenges for consumers’ benefit, oftentimes they forget to measure the most important performance of all… their own. This fourth installment of the Performance is Data Series explores exactly how Investment Performance teams can embark on a key performance indicator (KPI) centered approach to measure more than just the performance of others and introspectively assess operations.
by Clay Corcimiglia
Read Full Article