Middle-office operations for asset managers

We partner with asset managers, wealth managers and hedge funds to help them run robust, cost-effective and stable middle-office operations and create “operational alpha”.

Overview

The biggest challenges facing most middle-office operations teams post-pandemic are employee attrition and finding top talent to replace them. The increasing number of innovative and complex/alternative asset-class investment strategies amid growing data management issues has only complicated the situation and diverted management focus.

At Acuity, we strategically partner with our clients to work as an extension of their teams. Our ability to hire, train and retain top finance talent remains our main differentiating factor. Our firm’s capital markets research heritage has helped us understand and manage requirements of middle-office operations teams and enhanced our middle office services. Our ability to run cost-effective and stable middle-office operations has enabled our clients to achieve their operational alpha goals.

Our experienced analysts provide support on several fund accounting and shadow accounting activities, such as trade processing, reconciliations, corporate actions, pricing/valuation and NAV calculations, for simple securities to complex structured products across global markets. We also provide support on capital activity, administrative tasks (including invoicing support), investment management regulatory reporting and portfolio management.

Middle and Back office operations support with wide asset class coverage such as Equity and Fixed Income (Public/Private Equity, Bonds, Public/Private Credit and SPACs), Derivatives (Options, Swaps, Forwards and Futures) and Loans (CLO, CMBS/CRE, Unsecured loans, ABS/MBS, Project Finance and RMBS)

Who we serve

Portfolio operations support – selected capabilities

  • Transaction/trade processing

    • Trade confirmation

    • Identifying and fixing trade failures

    • Manual booking of complex trades

    • Counterparty confirmation

    • Cash flow monitoring

    • Liquidity management


  • Reconciliation

    • Reconciliation of cash and positions

    • Reconciliation of custody/broker/trustee vs fund admin books

    • Automated and manual reconciliation

    • Clearing breaks in a timely manner

    • Report publication


  • Corporate actions and reference data

    • Creating and maintaining security and event databases/security master functions

    • Corporate action feed monitoring

    • Comparing data against data sources for accuracy

    • Corporate action processing on tools

    • Modelling securities not supported by the platform


  • Valuations/pricing

    • Ensuring 100% price availability

    • Comparing data from different data sources for accuracy

    • Identifying price inconsistencies, justifying price jumps/stale prices, etc.

    • Manually updating prices of OTC products

    • Producing reports in line withprice volatility


  • NAV calculation

    • Recording capital flow received from transfer agency

    • Recording accruals and income from treasury team

    • Integrating price/corporate action feed and checking O/S breaks

    • Computing fees (performance, management fees, etc.) and invoicing

    • Calculating/generating NAV packs and IRR


    • Client onboarding and bookkeeping

    • Subscription and redemption processing

    • Dividend reinvestment

    • Switching (within the same AMC)

    • Invoice database management

    • Cash confirmation from liquidity teams. external vendor coordination for fee payment and client servicing

    • Managing collateral, margin, cash, income and expenses of the fund

    • MIS reporting

    • Form PF reports

    • AIFMD reports

    • Final terms

    • PRIPS, KIIDs, etc.

    • Performance measurement

    • Attribution

    • Risk reporting

    • Investment reporting

    • Data aggregation and validation

    • FIS VPM

    • FactSet

    • MSCI Barra

    • SunGard FIS

    • SEI ARCHWAY

    • FIS INVESTRAN

    • TLM

    • Aladdin (by BlackRock)

    • GENEVA

    • PORT

    • ALLVUE

    • Bloomberg

    • WSO

    • Global Portfolio

Portfolio operations support – selected capabilities

  • Transaction/trade processing

    • Trade confirmation

    • Identifying and fixing trade failures

    • Manual booking of complex trades

    • Counterparty confirmation

    • Cash flow monitoring

    • Liquidity management


  • Reconciliation

    • Reconciliation of cash and positions

    • Reconciliation of custody/broker/trustee vs fund admin books

    • Automated and manual reconciliation

    • Clearing breaks in a timely manner

    • Report publication


  • Corporate actions and reference data

    • Creating and maintaining security and event databases/security master functions

    • Corporate action feed monitoring

    • Comparing data against data sources for accuracy

    • Corporate action processing on tools

    • Modelling securities not supported by the platform


  • Valuations/pricing

    • Ensuring 100% price availability

    • Comparing data from different data sources for accuracy

    • Identifying price inconsistencies, justifying price jumps/stale prices, etc.

    • Manually updating prices of OTC products

    • Producing reports in line withprice volatility


  • NAV calculation

    • Recording capital flow received from transfer agency

    • Recording accruals and income from treasury team

    • Integrating price/corporate action feed and checking O/S breaks

    • Computing fees (performance, management fees, etc.) and invoicing

    • Calculating/generating NAV packs and IRR


    • Client onboarding and bookkeeping

    • Subscription and redemption processing

    • Dividend reinvestment

    • Switching (within the same AMC)

    • Invoice database management

    • Cash confirmation from liquidity teams. external vendor coordination for fee payment and client servicing

    • Managing collateral, margin, cash, income and expenses of the fund

    • MIS reporting

    • Form PF reports

    • AIFMD reports

    • Final terms

    • PRIPS, KIIDs, etc.

    • Performance measurement

    • Attribution

    • Risk reporting

    • Investment reporting

    • Data aggregation and validation

    • FIS VPM

    • FactSet

    • MSCI Barra

    • SunGard FIS

    • SEI ARCHWAY

    • FIS INVESTRAN

    • TLM

    • Aladdin (by BlackRock)

    • GENEVA

    • PORT

    • ALLVUE

    • Bloomberg

    • WSO

    • Global Portfolio

What we have done

Corporate actions: Timely processing of events for fixed income investments
What we are proud of

Top 20

US-based asset manager

40%

operational cost savings

Break reconciliation and resolution across CLOs and SMAs
What we are proud of

50,000

priority accounting breaks resolved

40%

client bandwidth saving

Client services support to a CLO corporate trust
What we are proud of

USD2tn+

in AuM; the world’s largest custodian bank, based in the US

2,000

backlog cleared for cash reconciliation breaks

Trade confirmation and reconciliation support to a US-based hedge fund
What we are proud of

USD800m+

in AuM

3x

faster turnaround time

Shadow accounting (open-ended funds, CLOs, SMAs, hedge funds) support to Europe-based alternative investment manager
What we are proud of

30%

operational cost savings

40%

client bandwidth saving

Investment pricing, reconciliation and risk support to a US-based private equity firm
What we are proud of

20%

reduced turnaround time

100%

process compliance

Pricing and loan valuation support to a leading US-based investment management firm
What we are proud of

40%+

annualised operational cost savings

SPOC for pricing to different pricing vendors

Fund accounting support to a US-based exchange-traded product (ETP) provider
What we are proud of

300%

increase in product coverage

50%

faster turnaround in NAVs released through our streamlined process

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