Today, asset managers have to do more with less. Volatile markets, low yield rates, rising costs, global investor demand for sustainability and transparency, and downward pressure on revenue are roiling the industry and impacting business strategy.
To combat these challenges, many are moving away from cumbersome legacy technologies and actively embracing digital transformation in order to stand out from the competition and win new business.
OMS providers have invested heavily in improving the solutions they offer over the last decade. But still, selecting the right technology partner to help improve operational alpha can be challenging.
To help out, here are the three critical order management tools asset managers should consider when bringing a new OMS solution to their operations.
API Interoperability
Interoperability and connectivity are more than just buzzwords. With open architecture, asset managers can add features on the fly without having to do a massive upgrade and can make incremental changes, minimizing the disruption those upgrades could potentially cause.
APIs also power the seamless exchange of information between a vendor's suite of applications and external applications. Although APIs have existed for years, the technology has now matured to a point where different applications can communicate seamlessly, despite differences in technical architectures.
Say, for example, that you want to run a quantitative trading platform outside of your OMS or want to view scenario analysis, newsfeed updates, or market intelligence without leaving your OMS. The ideal solution should allow you to unlock these capabilities through steadfast and secure connectivity to partner applications and third parties.
Increased interoperability across the investment ecosystem using APIs also gives rise to improved data management. Accessing data when and how you want will empower your teams to make better informed investment decisions and help you solve your business challenges more quickly.
Asset managers should seek vendors that offer a range of API modules, from portfolio analytics, modeling, and trading, through to compliance and operations. A good example of this is Eze Marketplace, an online store of ready-to-use apps and solutions from trusted third-party partners. This solution is embedded within the Eze platform for a seamless, end-to-end investment experience and allows users to easily find and leverage plug-and-play solutions to unlock additional capabilities for risk, analytics, data visualization, market intelligence, and more.
Investment Rules
When you run models for funds that have client-specific nuances, your OMS should be smart enough to automate the process based on the substitution and replacement rules assigned to the fund. This is especially valuable when you’re managing tens, if not hundreds, of portfolios and accounts.
Additionally, many of our larger clients have specific, one-off restrictions related to an investor’s separately managed account that conflicts with the investment model that the account is supposed to follow, such as a mandate to not hold sin stocks.
Let’s say you’re looking to substitute one specific symbol for another every time it’s traded or take the market value of what would have been dedicated to a certain stock and distribute it pro-rata across the rest of the positions in a specific account. Investment rules can automatically tell your OMS what to do next if there is consistent logic that can be applied to the account for these one-off scenarios. Additionally, reduced clicks mean you have more time to focus on alpha generation.
Smart Compliance
It’s no longer enough to have a system that runs basic compliance. One of the first questions you should ask when considering implementing or switching OMS providers is: “Does this OMS allow me to extend holistic pre-trade compliance to my execution platform?”
Asset managers need to be able to create and consolidate compliance rules easily and quickly while managing compliance in real-time, across asset classes, and ideally on a single screen. In addition to rule libraries that reflect the latest in the ever-evolving world of regulation, your OMS should allow you to build your own using industry-standard rules and rule templates for exposure, benchmarks, restrictions, and more.
A synchronized front office will allow you to run accurate position checks and allocation automation as you make trades in your EMS.
Eze OMS simplifies the assignment and management of investment guidelines by providing asset managers with more than 500 templates and regulatory rule sets. Additionally, users can choose from a robust library of APIs connecting trade, security, position, and reference data, as well as engage multiple functions through REST APIs, which can accommodate any workflow.
If you’re an asset manager looking to minimize operational risk and revolutionize your workflows through improved automation, flexibility, and connectivity, download the Eze OMS for Asset Managers Overview. To find out more about Eze Marketplace and our Marketplace partners, click here.
