Buy-Side Technology Awards 2015: Best Outsourcing Provider to the Buy Side—SunGard

It’s also due to its scale and breadth of services that SunGard has been named this year’s best outsourcing provider to the buy side, a category that is yet to see a dominant vendor emerge: Since this award was introduced in 2012, SunGard is the fourth different winner in as many years, following SEI, SS&C Technologies, and, most recently, Eagle Investment Systems.

SunGard is one of the world’s largest financial software companies, with annual revenues of $2.8 billion. Its software is delivered primarily via the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, while its investment operations represents not only a comprehensive technology offering that can be leveraged on the cloud, according to Tony Warren, head of strategy and solutions management at SunGard, but it’s also a suite of services designed to create a supporting ecosystem for the full fund administration lifecycle, underpinned by the firm’s InvestOne investment accounting platform.

SunGard is able to run many of its clients’ day-to-day operations on their behalf, thanks to its datacenters, Warren says. InvestOne has been offered as a hosted solution since it was first launched more than 30 years ago. Today, an impressive 75 percent of the firm’s clients consume the solution on a SaaS basis, Warren adds. SunGard’s outsourcing service minimizes many of the costs, challenges and much of the effort associated with in-house installations and management of these solutions. “As a technology partner to the industry, we own the responsibility to ensure modern, integrated technology that serves to help offset the cost pressures on fund administrators through efficiencies and scale,” Warren says. “At the same time, we need to support asset managers’ and their investors’ needs, who seek growth via new markets and instruments.”

As part of its commitment to outsourcing, SunGard’s investment operations transfer agency solution has extended its capabilities to provide a fully managed service for shareholder record-keeping and servicing to asset managers and third-party administrators.

Going forward, SunGard has a lot to prove, not least that the Fidelity National acquisition was a good move for the vendor and its substantial clientele. The industry is watching. 

SunGard’s outsourcing service minimizes many of the costs, challenges and much of the effort associated with in-house installations and management of these solutions.