FlexTrade, a global provider of multi-asset execution and order management systems, and Woodline Partners, a San Francisco-based investment firm, have integrated MSCI’s Barra real time portfolio risk and factor analysis solutions into the FlexONE OEMS.
MSCI’s factor models are used to help investment managers understand portfolio and market risk, enabling them to build portfolios based on objectives and risk tolerance. With this integration, portfolio managers using FlexONE can model order more efficiently and better understand pro-forma risk before staging the order for trading. Risk managers using FlexONE’s pre-trade compliance engine can also set thresholds to be observed in real-time.
Aaron Levine, Vice President, OEMS solutions at FlexTrade, notes: “Our clients, such as Woodline Partners LP, have been demanding more real-time risk and factor analytics.
“What used to be an end of day report is now available upstream in the investment life cycle, both for portfolio managers constructing their trades and risk managers taking proactive control of the firm’s active factor exposures.
“It was a pleasure to partner with both MSCI Barra and Woodline to integrate these next generation workflows into our OEMS. Whether a firm is modestly factor-aware or running explicit factor-driven strategies, our easy integration makes it possible for any manager to monitor real-time portfolio risk.”
Matthew Hooker, Chief Operating Officer at Woodline, says: “Our goal has been to integrate factor analytics with institutional grade position, performance and trade management. This partnership delivered the full capabilities of MSCI’s covariance modelling within FlexTrade’s configurable user interface. As a result, our Portfolio Managers have the operational simplicity of real-time risk, performance attribution and pro-forma analysis in one solution, which empowers the Woodline mission of idiosyncratic portfolio construction.”
Jorge Mina, Head of Analytics at MSCI, says: “Our world class factor and risk analytics content can now seamlessly be accessed through the FlexONE OEMS platform. The integration can simplify workflows and improve communication, leveraging our industry leading factor and risk models. Working with FlexTrade aligns with our strategy to provide flexibility to clients in accessing MSCI solutions for portfolio risk and factor analytics.”
