BUY-SIDE TECHNOLOGY AWARDS: Best buy-side OMS: Charles River Development

Charles River Development has established something of a mini-dynasty at the Buy-Side Technology Awards, with its Charles River Investment Management System winning best buy-side OMS for the fourth year running. Several well-established competitors have made considerable strides in recent years in order management technology and racked up impressive client wins, but Charles River remains the vendor to beat in this category.

Charles River IMS still incorporates the same five modules: Charles River Manager for decision support, Charles River Compliance for pre- and post-trade compliance, Charles River Trader for order and execution management, Charles River Post-Trade for matching and settlement, and Charles River Performance for performance measurement and attribution. What has changed is the market climate in which clients have applied those capabilities, and they’ve held up well.

The system’s automated compliance workflow has proven effective for managers needing to beef up real-time compliance monitoring. Rule-building and maintenance tools, customized report generation and complete audit histories are all more crucial features in the current regulatory and market environment. The pre-built rules library included in the platform contains more than 1,700 individual requirements across 35 regulatory entities worldwide.

From a single point of entry, buy-side trading desks using Charles River IMS can access algorithmic and program trading tools, as well as real-time data feeds and watch lists, pre- and post-trade transaction cost analysis and trade analytics, providing key operational efficiencies to trading staff and reducing the potential for error.

Of course, the Charles River OMS offering isn’t for every buy-side firm, but then no such system could be. But for those managers whose investment strategies and technology requirements align with Charles River IMS capabilities, there simply is no better product on the market. —SE

JUDGE'S COMMENT
Charles River demonstrates strong compliance capabilities, support for multi-asset, multi-regional trading activities, and a robust trading network.

CHARLES RIVER DEVELOPMENT REACTION
“Charles River Development is honored to be named best buy-side order management system for the fourth consecutive year. This award validates Charles River’s commitment to empower traders, portfolio managers, and compliance officers with advanced tools to improve productivity, execution quality and control, while lowering risk. Over the past year, some of our new offerings include expanded execution management capabilities, performance measurement and attribution, new fixed-income and private wealth capabilities, more data options, and enhanced hosted and managed services. This continued investment in research and development helps our over 300 client firms in 38 countries improve efficiencies and reduce costs.”
—Tom Driscoll, managing director, global, Charles River Development