European Fund Administration (EFA) has deployed AIM Software’s GAIN Portfolio Pricing business application to manage increasing regulatory requirements around portfolio pricing and meet growing client demand for more frequent net asset value (NAV) calculations.
The AIM portfolio pricing application, which is based on the company’s GAIN enterprise data management platform, is the central component of EFA’s fund pricing solution that captures and processes pricing information from sources including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and SIX Financial Information. Acting as a pricing policy master, the AIM solution allows EFA to define selection and validation rules in a flexible way for each fund or portfolio, building on a library of best practice rules that comply with regulatory frameworks for NAV calculation.
EFA selected the AIM Portfolio Pricing application after a comprehensive evaluation process and on the basis of the company’s track record in the fund administration industry, its knowledge of the business, and its business application approach to data management. This gives users flexibility and control over pricing policies, data sources, controls and checks, and ensures compliant portfolio pricing without recourse to the IT team.
The resulting benefits include the ability to on-board new clients, portfolios and assets in hours rather than days; the opportunity to automate, control and optimise daily operations, including NAV calculations that can be streamlined by pushing verified prices to fund accounting teams as soon as they are ready; and the ability to offer a tailor made pricing service for clients creating complex financial products.
Frederic Bilas, director of operations at EFA, explains: “The new application allows us to further differentiate by being able to offer a high degree of customisation, to integrate regulatory evolutions and to respond flexibly to changing client needs in a highly competitive market environment.”
Jean-Marc Verdure, director – information technology and organisation at EFA, adds: “Manual controls have been dramatically improved enabling our accountants to concentrate on the real issues. They can manage the entire pricing process using a single, central platform gathering all the relevant data. This platform helps them make appropriate decisions in order to guarantee the representativeness and independence of the selected prices, as well as the traceability of the selection process.”
EFA and AIM worked in partnership through 2013 to deliver the fund pricing solution and continue to work together in developing the AIM software to further augment the fund administrator’s automation.
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