BST Awards 2020: Best overall buy-side technology provider, 2020—Quantifi  

Last year, Quantifi won the best overall buy-side product in the BST Awards, thanks to its multi-asset, front-to-back-office Portfolio Management Solution (PMS). This year, the risk, analytics and trading technology specialist founded by CEO Rohan Douglas in New Jersey in 2002, has gone a step further and upgraded its product-of-the-year title to the highest profile category of these awards: the best overall buy-side technology provider for 2020. This is the firm’s third category win in this year’s BST Awards, having also won the best buy-side portfolio analysis tool and best buy-side pricing/valuation service categories.

According to Douglas, one of the key themes over the last few years that Quantifi has identified and continues to focus on is its clients’ ability to distinguish themselves by way of creating alpha, which means having to trade across a broad range of assets and markets, while simultaneously analyzing data faster, more effectively and on an ad hoc basis. “At the base level, we have very broad asset coverage and we’re particularly strong in some of the more esoteric products,” Douglas explains. “We also have a business model based on clients driving the product—we listen to what they are asking for and we feed that back into the product as quickly as we can,” he says.

Quantifi’s infrastructure and architecture—which Douglas describes as “old enough to be proven, but young enough to be flexible”—also play a key role in helping its clients satisfactorily address their most pressing needs, highlighting the crucial, enabling role the firm’s technology stack plays in allowing them to focus on making the most judicious investment decisions. “It’s relatively easy for us to add support for new asset classes,” Douglas explains. “A core part of what we do is support quite complex analytics and valuation, which helps us cover pretty much any product our clients are likely to come across.” 

Last year Numerix won this category, joining past winners TriOptima, FactSet, UBS Delta, Advent Software, Charles River Development, Eze Software, Fidessa, Algorithmics and RIMES Technologies as recipients of this award.