Waters Rankings 2020: Best Market Risk Solution Provider—SS&C Algorithmics

The disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic is like nothing ever seen before—which also means that traditional risk calculations are not enough because they weren’t designed for this type of crisis. As the virus began to wreak havoc globally in March, volatility became a market staple, making real-time risk calculations and stress testing even more imperative.

SS&C Algorithmics, the winner in the Waters Rankings’ market risk solution provider category, has approached this changing landscape from three angles. First, the vendor wanted to provide business users with tools to perform real-time “what-if” analysis and aggregation, initially focusing on asset/liability modeling and liquidity, enabling users, rather than IT, to perform their stress tests in real-time and control the orchestration and associated workflows themselves. “We have now extended this to market risk and the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB),” says Neil Dodgson, vice president for WW product management at SS&C Algorithmics.

For the second piece, the company has migrated numerous tools onto the cloud over the last 12 months. “We have lifted/shifted clients off their legacy on-premise deployments onto a software-as-a-service infrastructure that is entirely maintained and managed on their behalf,” Dodgson says. “In addition, for business problems such as the large compute requirements of FRTB, we have helped clients deploy compute processing on the cloud, integrating seamlessly with their existing Algorithmics on-premise deployment.”

Thirdly, SS&C Algorithmics has developed proprietary codes, named Boxy, that use a unique method of compilation that facilitates high-performance analytics, he says. For example, on a credit valuation adjustment (CVA) trading desk portfolio, clients see a 97% reduction in hardware costs, coupled with a 95% reduction in batch time processing. “We will be looking to develop this further in the next 12 months,” he says.

Algorithmics had previously won this award in 2011. Last year’s winner was Wolters Kluwer, for its OneSumX Market Risk solution.