Waters Rankings 2019: Best Accounting System Provider: SS&C Advent

As new and emerging asset classes seep into more portfolios, and businesses race to keep up with mounting reporting requirements, financial accounting isn’t getting easier. If anything, it’s more of a headache as businesses try to strike a balance between optimizing performance and not breaking the bank. SS&C Advent’s suite of solutions—namely, Advent Portfolio Exchange (APX) and Geneva—secured its spot as the best accounting system provider in this year’s Waters Rankings.

One of the key challenges for industry participants is in achieving good data governance, management and integration. With these in mind, SS&C Advent has made several updates to both offerings over the last year.

The vendor added to APX a new API for portfolios, token-based authentication capabilities and an end-to-end logging framework, allowing administrators to more easily monitor processes and automation. Accounting enhancements include a new tax-sensitive closing method and added dashboard visibility that provides accounts with an overview of custodial reconciliation progress. According to SS&C Advent, a select number of early adopter clients are currently piloting the initial release of a new web user interface that offers a lighter footprint, more intuitive navigation and simpler workflows.

This year, SS&C Advent strengthened the system’s bank-debt accounting functionality, and added more flexibility to swap processing and other finance calculations. Katherine Pearce, vice president of solutions management, says asset managers particularly benefit from new features for asset-backed securities, which allow them to import and schedule future cash flows for amortization calculations.

“We’re looking at ways to deploy emerging technologies into our solutions, including machine learning capabilities to enhance customer value in the near future,” she says. Machine learning, natural-language processing and robotic process automation are three possible avenues, with the potential to “eliminate hundreds of hours of manual work for our customers.”