BST Awards 2025: Best buy-side performance measurement and attribution product—SS&C Advent

Overview

Sylvan is a performance book of record platform designed to help users analyze and explain performance in an operationally efficient way, featuring:

• Accurate and timely performance analysis and delivery across all asset classes, including fixed income, private equity, real estate and derivatives
• Advanced data management functionality, including an integrated validation process
• Flexible performance and attribution calculations tailored to meet a variety of business needs
• Performance-based risk management
• Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) compliance and verification
• Adaptable reporting with customizable reports and definable dashboards

The solution  

SS&C Sylvan:

• Acts as a performance book of record, storing calculated results from inception while preserving changes
• Supports different calculation methodologies, including time-weighted rate of return (TWRR), money-weighted rate of return, gross/net, after-tax, price to earnings ratios, and net-asset value (NAV) performance
• Allows results rollup to definable hierarchical structures, including securities and portfolios
• Supports GIPS compliance with rules-based membership and disclosure management
• Delivers visual representations of data
• Offers integration capabilities to connect to IBORs and position-keeping systems
• Assists performance teams with exceptions-based workflows to streamline processes

Secret sauce  

Sylvan differs from other performance and attribution products by offering a single, integrated solution for performance, attribution, risk and composites that can be tailored to match firms’ investment management processes. The area of effect of additions and changes is automatically determined and performance, attribution and composites are updated/recalculated along with data validation workflows for out-of-tolerance data. Asset managers can then focus on analyzing investment decisions through customizable reports, dashboards and attribution, and deliver results to clients.

Recent milestones

SS&C recently:

• Introduced several new attribution methodologies
• Significantly enhanced the calculation technology and processes within Sylvan to ensure scalability and reliability to handle ever-increasing data volumes and serve clients with over 1 million accounts with sophisticated analytics
• Made system interoperability upgrades that allow clients to embed Sylvan within their ecosystem through API integration, enabling deployment without forcing users to learn a new software package
• Saw Sylvan’s global client base surpass 170 with new US and European clients

Future objectives

Functional objectives include:

• Performance analysis AI: Release of an LLM that reviews data calculated in Sylvan and provides analysis and commentary
• Continued data validation and workflow improvements for enhanced data quality and operational efficiency
• Enhanced Sylvan API to offer the platform as a managed service

Architectural objectives include:

• RabbitMQ message bus for message queue-based integration, allowing expanded scalability to support higher volumes
• Event-driven architecture for real-time user notifications
• Docker containerization to enable cloud-native deployment—e.g., via Azure

Why they won

As a performance and attribution platform, Sylvan has had an enviable reputation across the buy side for over 25 years. It joined the SS&C stable in the wake of the acquisition of its parent company, Financial Models Company, back in 2005. The past two decades have seen Sylvan develop significantly, thanks to continued innovation and investment by SS&C, such that it is now so much more than a pure performance and attribution platform. 

This year’s success in the BST Awards is largely down to Sylvan’s combination of scalability, flexibility and analytical depth. As a performance book of record, Sylvan provides buy-side firms with accurate, timely and transparent performance insights across a range of asset classes, including equities, fixed income, private markets and derivatives. Its validation workflow ensures all-important data integrity, while a range of attribution methodologies and customizable reporting formats allow its buy-side users to align analytics with their investment philosophies and end-investors’ mandates/requirements.

SS&C has been busy on the development front with a number of recent enhancements, including an improved calculation engine, new attribution models and API-based interoperability, underlining Sylvan’s focus on operational efficiency and innovation. By unifying performance, attribution, risk and composites within a single platform, Sylvan enables buy-side firms to scale, comply with their GIPS mandates, and deliver fresh, explainable, accurate and transparent performance results to their end-investors.