AFTAs 2017: Best Middle-Office Initiative—RIMES Technologies

Benchmark data is core to Fort Washington’s portfolio and investment analysis, which is featured in more than 15 of its attribution models and more than 1,000 internal and external monthly reports. 

Recently, RIMES assisted with automating Fort Washington’s fixed-income benchmark processes. This was timely given that Fort Washington was transitioning to a new analytics platform. To manage that risk, Fort Washington moved its entire Bloomberg Barclays Index over to RIMES and, as a result, was able to strengthen its data quality and its confidence in it, while also increasing responsiveness and its ability to obtain historical data. 

Alessandro Ferrari, executive vice president of global marketing at RIMES, says that unlike traditional outsourcing, aggregation or integration models, RIMES’ managed data services allow its clients to stay up to date on technology and access the necessary and specialist skillsets to address a wide range of data management issues relating to cost, quality of service and risk. 

Tom Anderson, director of performance and reconciliation at Fort Washington, says RIMES’ approach is unique in that the firm listens and channels feedback into its internal innovation roadmap. “The result is a service that meets our needs and has enabled us to more easily expand into new asset classes and enhance our performance and risk functions,” Anderson says. 

An example of this is RIMES’ Feed Audit Analytics, which was recently deployed to further streamline data management processes at Fort Washington. Previously, the asset manager had to go through onerous internal procedures to reload or access a file. Now it is able to access its feeds through RIMES’ secure and cloud-based portal, thus making it easier to resolve issues. 

RIMES’ approach to customer service benefits Fort Washington as it expands into new asset classes such as bank loans, emerging markets debt, and international equities.

In the last 12 months, RIMES has launched two new solutions: RegFocus MAR, which helps clients comply with requirements associated with the Market Abuse Regulation and Mifid II; and RegFocus BMR, which provides clients with full compliance with the new Benchmarks Regulation, which went live at the start of January 2018.