AFTAs 2017: Best Collaboration Initiative—SS&C Advent and Maitland
The collaboration led to the integration of the firms' seperate data management solutions.
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Over the last few years, the capital markets industry has experienced a wave of collaboration among third-party software providers. As a result, firms have benefitted from an array of new and innovative tools and products that address multiple challenges within the scope of their operational processes.
In 2016, the AFTAs introduced the best collaboration initiative category, with the inaugural win going to MTS Markets and Bloomberg, thanks to the MTS BondsPro rollout on Bloomberg’s fixed-income execution management system, TSOX.
This year, the jury gave the award to SS&C Advent and Maitland for their partnership which resulted in the integration of Maitland’s Avatar Fund Manager (AvatarFM) portal with the Geneva World Investor platform.
The win went to SS&C Advent and Maitland for a number of reasons. First, the two firms had a clear and specific business plan in mind before they proceeded with their alliance—they wanted to move into the emerging realm of hybrid fund structures, which tend to focus solely on illiquid investments, such as distressed debt, collateralized loan obligations and bank debt.
An initial investigation of the market by the partners revealed that it was beset by complex operational and data management requirements. By combining their services, the two companies offered a solution that addresses the market’s needs, as it combines the best features of each product. Geneva World Investor is an all-in-one system that allows investors to directly access complex asset classes, offering support for portfolio and investor accounting.
The integration of Maitland’s AvatarFM portal with its key data warehousing, client reporting and CRM components, proved to be useful for the administration of hybrid structures. More specifically, the combined solution offers end-to-end functionality that allows fund managers and administrators to streamline their investor servicing workflows with a single, centralized source for investor data. It also ensures timely and accurate investor accounting, calculates performance incentive fees, and delivers automated reporting.
Johnathan Eldridge, senior director of product management at SS&C Advent, explains that the collaboration will be extended, with the two firms planning to expand the unified solution in 2019.
“We will continue to extend the deal-by-deal workflow and the waterfall calculation capabilities,” he says. “We want to put more query and report customization power in the hands of end-users and endorse the Institutional Limited Partners Association reporting template, alleviating the manual process of meeting investor requirements around fees and expenses.”
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