Buy-Side Technology Awards: Best Implementation at a Buy-Side Firm—RIMES Technologies

This is RIMES Technologies' second award of the 2011 Buy-Side Technology Awards, having already scooped the honors in the best data provider to the buy side category, its fourth such win in this category in succession, which, if you consider the level of competition in this segment, is no mean feat for the New York-based firm.

Buy-side firms that view their operating infrastructure as a competitive advantage tend to guard the details surrounding their technology implementations, which is the case with this year’s best technology implementation. Needless to say, RIMES was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the client—the international operation of one of the industry’s largest buy-side firms, both in terms of assets under management and headcount, headquartered in the US—an agreement that naturally Waters needs to honor. What doesn’t fall under the confidentiality cloak, however, are the details relating to the implementation, for which RIMES has been rewarded. RIMES explains that the project to implement its RIMES Benchmark Data Service at the client kicked off in February 2011 and was completed on target and on budget some four months later.

Prior to the project, the client sourced its fixed-income data from numerous data vendors, which required it to feed each dataset into its in-house risk management platform to support its front office on a daily basis. At the time, all its data management functions were managed internally. The client also expressed the need for a forward/preview fixed-income function, which it would have had to source externally, in addition to building the various interfaces for, and managing the processes, internally.

As a result of the implementation, RIMES assumed responsibility for managing all of the firm’s fixed-income data feeds with the RIMES Benchmark Data Service. The fully managed service provides the client with additional calculations as required, it validates the data according to standard and client-specified routines, and builds each file to fit the client’s in-house risk application. According to RIMES, the client retains all the controls around its data, while outsourcing its entire fixed-income data management requirements to the vendor. Additionally, RIMES was able to provide the client with the forward/preview fixed-income function it desired, which comes standard with the RIMES Benchmark Data Service. —VBA