BST Awards 2025: Best buy-side investment book of record (IBOR) platform—SimCorp

Overview

SimCorp is clear in its assertion that speed and accuracy define competitive advantage. To that end, the firm’s multi-asset IBOR delivers real-time positions, exposures, valuations and cash across all asset classes, creating the single source of truth that eliminates data inconsistencies, reconciliation delays and access barriers that cloud investment decision-making. With unified, accurate data spanning the front, middle, and back office, teams are able to capture alpha opportunities and meet accelerating market requirements like T+1. KBC Asset Management reports that implementing SimCorp has yielded increased funds managed per portfolio manager, while seamlessly handling transitions on a T+1 basis.

The solution  

SimCorp’s IBOR serves as SimCorp One’s foundational data layer, powering front-to-back operations with instantly synchronized information. When portfolio managers execute trades, the risk team is able to view updated exposures immediately. When operations process corporate actions, investment teams see adjusted positions instantaneously. Frictionless, no reconciliation, no delays—just unified, real-time positions and cash across public and private assets. This seamless data orchestration enables firms to act with confidence, transforming operational decisiveness and efficiency into a competitive advantage.

Secret sauce  

Unlike cobbled-together solutions requiring constant reconciliation, SimCorp delivers an IBOR, architected from inception as a unified platform without translation layers or integration points. This architectural simplicity eliminates internal reconciliations entirely, which means that regardless of whichever team updates data, every team sees it instantly. SimCorp has spent over 50 years perfecting unified architecture as a pure technology provider—it remains focused on transforming how investment firms operate through technology innovation, not M&A engineering.

Recent milestones

• AI-powered investment insights: Integrated Microsoft Copilot with SimCorp’s IBOR, enabling portfolio managers to query positions, exposures and risks across all asset classes using natural language, while maintaining its real-time foundation
• Intelligent compliance integration: Compliance Manager rules are embedded within Axioma Portfolio Optimizer, eliminating compliance violations before they occur for portfolio managers.
• Intuitive user experience: Launched SimCorp One Help with natural language querying, improving accessibility for new and occasional users through conversational assistance

Future objectives

• Enhanced data infrastructure: Expanding SimCorp’s IBOR foundation beyond investment data to support comprehensive data needs, while maintaining its core IBOR principles of real-time consistency and accessibility
• Cloud-native development: Continuing development of advanced cloud-native capabilities that leverage the firm’s unified architecture for scalability and performance across global operations
• SimCorp Alternatives: SimCorp’s acquisition of Domos FS in September 2025 strengthens its IBOR architecture across the private markets ecosystem, reinforcing its positioning as a unified data foundation for public and private assets within a single platform.

Why they won

One name, more than any other, is synonymous with the IBOR realm and that name is SimCorp, thanks to the outstanding work the Danish buy-side specialist has undertaken on the IBOR front for more than two decades. Now part of Deutsche Börse Group since its 2023 acquisition, SimCorp wins this category on the back of its outstanding SimCorp One multi-asset investment management platform designed to help institutional investors and asset managers manage the entire investment lifecycle. 

Built from inception as a single, integrated architecture as opposed to a patchwork of best-of-breed applications cobbled together over the years, SimCorp One is designed to deliver instant, accurate positions, exposures, valuations, and cash across all asset classes, eliminating reconciliation delays and data inconsistencies. This “single source of truth” allows portfolio managers, risk teams, and operations personnel to act on synchronized information, driving speed, accuracy and regulatory readiness. Recent innovations, such as AI-powered querying via Microsoft Copilot and real-time compliance integration with Axioma, enhance the platform’s usability and all-round buy-side appeal.

If there was a category in these awards that rewarded the best overall entry from all 248 entries received, SimCorp would surely have taken that award home too, such was the quality of its IBOR entry. Chapeau!