Advent has long been a key provider to the buy-side industry, and we have seen significant changes in the levels of service firms are providing to their institutional and high net worth clients. Geneva – Advent's managed account platform technology – is uniquely suited to this business due to its ‘on demand’ nature, complex asset class coverage and forecasting capabilities.

Our model has always been multi-prime, multi-counterparty, and multi-asset class based, giving us capabilities that truly allow for discretionary and fund management within a single platform. We are honoured that our clients have selected us as their partner in solving the challenges they have faced and in particular the issues they are encountering in this turbulent time in the financial industry. 

With the focus on greater risk transparency, investors are demanding not only that firms check off on real risk measurement and operational workflows, they want to actually see them in process. Multiple systems and tracking items offline – or not having a true view of cash flows – has led to investors placing redemptions and consolidating assets in firms that can show true front-to-back operational risk management.

Geneva release 8.0 delivers full post-execution to reconciliation functionality with workflows, case management, and managerial reporting that lets firms really get a grip on their operational processes, manage multiple counterparties, and report on these issues to both their management and their clients. With Geneva 8.0, our clients today can know about issues long before they hit the reconciliation queue. 

Geneva is built for the fund community. Our clients are our partners – we feel the most effective way to continue to build on the product is to work in tandem with clients to solve the issues that they face. Geneva requires no more effort than any other portfolio management system. The difference is what it does behind the scenes – providing a full fund accounting solution without the additional overhead.

Our clients profit from this model by gaining better insight into their investment data, being more collaborative with their administrators, and gaining the ability to manage cash and perform forecasting directly in the system. Add to that the ability to manage both discretionary business and fund products – and link the two – and you get a system that is really unique in its ability to service firms in the separately managed account space. 

Account platforms really need to move more toward workflow and unified processing. Today funds may manage allocations for funds, and then have separate systems for allocations to investors. Account platforms have to manage the entire process from manager to investor – and allow for the connectivity to the market that enables these processes to occur with as much straight-through processing as possible.

This means embracing the market and its players. Our footprint across prime brokers, fund administrators, asset managers and hedge funds means that connectivity and communication are issues we are uniquely positioned to solve.

Chris Cattermole is Geneva sales manager for Advent Software EMEA

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