Waters Rankings 2020: Best Performance Measurement and Attribution System Provider—BNY Mellon Data and Analytics Solutions

Effective performance measurement and attribution solutions are an integral part of middle-office operations, and core to being competitive and compliant in an increasingly unpredictable market. BNY Mellon Data and Analytics (previously Eagle Investment Solutions) has taken significant steps to simplify these data-driven processes through the development of its portfolio management solutions, including its Performance Book of Record (PBOR), making it this year’s winner of the best performance measurement and attribution system provider category at the Waters Rankings.

Mark Goodey, head of investment analytics, data and analytics solutions at BNY Mellon, admits that most measurement tools on the block use the same methodologies for calculating performance and include “tick the box” functionality. But, he says, BNY Mellon Data and Analytics’ platform has two core differentiators: its data management capabilities and its flexible plug-and-play framework.

In the last four years, the firm has redesigned its portfolio management technologies to create an open architecture that enables buy-side clients to pick and choose offerings from its product suite or from partnering with third-party solutions. The underlying platform allows components to be plugged in and provides the ability to swap out tools to meet changing demands. “We adopted the approach of an open ecosystem quite some time back, so where we don’t believe that we have got the best capability in ‘X,’ chances are that we can find a partner who can deliver that ‘X’ with us, so that our clients can take advantage of that collaboration,” says Goodey.

In 2013, the firm developed the idea of a PBOR, which functions across multiple systems and provides visibility across all investment information, asset classes, performance results and exposure analytics in one system. In more recent developments, the Portfolio Management platform has been updated to support the new version of the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), a voluntary standard for investment managers that went live in June 2019. Over the next 12 months, the firm will continue to build on its open architecture strategy, fine-tune client user-interfaces, and develop capabilities that link environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors to performance attributes.