AFTAs 2024: Best IT team—TCW Group

About the team

The charter of Los Angeles-based fixed-income specialist TCW Group’s Architecture and Engineering Team (AET) is to:

• Deliver the firm’s architectural roadmap
• Set standards for development and runtime tools
• Establish end-to-end architecture and design patterns
• Run the Architecture Review Board and mature its software development process
• Engineer innovative solutions and drive the firm’s cloud journey/strategy
• Develop shareable components and frameworks

TCW Group’s AET responds to evolving business demands driven by market opportunities, while ensuring the stability of its current environment and advancing the firm’s strategic architecture.

Key project  

TCW Group acquired Engine No.1’s (E1’s) thematic equity business and added it to its ETF product suite with new equity and fixed-income ETFs. AET integrated E1’s technology, migrated E1’s investment operations to TCW, built fixed-income ETF capabilities, and consolidated its ETF and mutual fund operations. With pre-announced ETF launch dates, AET ensured support in both the current environment and the strategic technology environment, including the upcoming launch of its new portfolio management platform, Aladdin.

Problems solved  

The ETF launch date was driven by favorable market timing and regulatory approval, although the firm’s leadership was concerned about the technology team’s ability to meet its launch deadlines. Amid a five-year modernization journey, 2024’s focus was on rolling out Aladdin to support TCW’s portfolio management operations, while building internal proprietary investment functions. Despite compressed revenues from years of unfavorable interest rates, maintaining headcount was crucial to ensure ETF capabilities were supported both in Aladdin and the current environment in case the Aladdin rollout was delayed.

Technology

E1 used AlphaDesk―London Stock Exchange Group’s order and portfolio management platform―to support its equity ETF operations, Amazon AWS infrastructure for reporting, and BNY as its custodian. TCW’s current environment includes Charles River Development for portfolio management and investment operations and no ETF capabilities. As part of its modernization drive, TCW is completing Aladdin testing with Snowflake as the data environment and Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider. The firm’s AET met its ETF launch deadlines by supporting ETF capabilities in E1’s environment and in both current and target TCW environments.