Buy-Side Technology Awards 2016: Best Outsourcing Provider to the Buy Side—FIS Global

It is the integration of traditionally siloed middle- and back-office processes that makes FIS Investment Operations able to provide the support, cost reductions and infrastructure management that asset managers now demand from an outsourcing solution. Its breadth of hosted and outsourced services covers investment accounting, administration, reporting, private equity management and administration, derivatives processing, workflow and process automation, pricing, corporate actions management, risk management, performance management, and collateral management, among others.

FIS Investment Operations is an integrated technology suite designed to support the entire fund administration lifecycle across multiple asset classes and pooled investment structures, including traditional, private equity, hedge funds/alternatives and insurance. While the vendor has substantial capabilities in delivering solutions for particular markets, FIS is now taking a more holistic approach to addressing the needs of both fund administrators and asset managers, aided extensively through its broadened portfolio as a result of the $9.1 billion acquisition of SunGard, completed in November last year. The benefits of subsuming SunGard’s substantial capabilities as a major technology vendor and service provider to the buy side are clear: The combined entity now counts over 20,000 clients worldwide, with an astonishing 750 million end-consumers, and the InvestOne solution now sits at the heart of FIS’ outsourcing offering. FIS has added a further 200 clients to its Investment Operations roster since June 2015.

The asset management back office has undergone major changes through technology transformation and many in the industry are asking more of their fund administrators, particularly in supplying more data for the middle office. Over the past year, FIS has sought to ease these pressures through the introduction of a robust corporate actions manager, money market reform software (allowing accounting applications to provide multiple intra-day valuation points) and embedded real-time reconciliation. Looking ahead, the vendor will be rolling out its new complex instrument builder tool in the first quarter of 2017, a middle-office service that allows users to build different flavors of instruments while capturing the terms and conditions within a flexible environment. 

The benefits of subsuming SunGard’s substantial capabilities as a major technology vendor and service provider to the buy side are clear: The combined entity now counts over 20,000 clients worldwide, with an astonishing 750 million end-consumers, and the InvestOne solution now sits at the heart of FIS’ outsourcing offering.