Buy-Side Technology Awards 2015: Best Broker-Supplied Tool/Technology—UBS Delta

If UBS Delta won this year’s best risk/portfolio analytics award for its breadth of functionality (see page 32), it takes this category for its continuously lengthening reach.

Few firms on the Street, banks or otherwise, can claim a buy-side technology base of over 2,200 individual users for a single product, but UBS can do just that. As in past years, newly onboarded firms using Delta exhibit real variety, from massive asset management firms to moderately sized pension schemes and small hedge funds. But what the judges found most impressive was the significant growth in adoption among current clients—with new teams pulling in Delta for fresh purposes.

Certainly, this is to do with Delta’s increasingly expansive modeling, performance and attribution, and reporting capabilities. But it also is to do with the changing nature of investment styles and a new appetite among institutional investors for alternative strategies that may have once seemed eccentric or risky.

Three illustrations from different areas prove the point: the reporting module in Delta can handle emerging markets hedge funds with bespoke credit long-short analytics, issuer charts, and spread risk analysis; available multi-asset class credit curves deploy a proprietary “hazard rate” process that uses volatility surfaces to produce greater granularity; and UBS’ support team has increasingly been helping clients with modeling of alternatives and private placements. 

These are the kinds of niches one can cover with 40 developers dedicated to Delta’s continued evolution, and as the sell side continues to develop new tech tools for its clientele, UBS has raised the bar for success ever higher with sibling tech initiatives like UBS Bond Port and UBS Neo, as well.

As in past years, newly onboarded firms using Delta exhibit real variety, from massive asset management firms to moderately sized pension schemes and small hedge funds. But what the judges found most impressive was the significant growth in adoption among current clients—with new teams pulling in Delta for fresh purposes.

Clearly, just commoditizing an in-house tool isn’t enough if one wants to really compete, and for UBS, furnishing outstanding tech to the buy side has graduated from a revenue stream to a passion. No one is better at it today.