Are rigid, inflexible systems affecting your portfolio management process efficiency and hindering growth? Your firm needs the flexibility to configure solutions to accommodate your specific needs, whereas closed systems that are isolated and incapable of interacting with other systems and tools can hinder your firms’ flexibility. Open platform systems, on the other hand, can offer your firm greater control over your systems, as they can be easily integrated with, and scale as required in accordance with your changing business needs.
In this article, we explore the benefits of using an investment portfolio management system built with an open platform, and how Limina’s platform has helped the Asset Management arm of Avanza Bank on its growth journey.
What is an open platform system?
An open investment management system enables you to swiftly connect new providers and data sources to your ecosystem. It could be onboarding a new custodian, a new execution platform or changing administrator. An open platform is designed to be as simple and straightforward as possible to connect. That means designing the core of the system around questions like how to enable business users to configure integrations.
In contrast, a closed platform is a platform that is either unwilling to - or not designed to - integrate easily with other systems and/or service providers. This can be due to technical reasons or pure business reasons, i.e. to keep users within the platform by making it harder to integrate other systems and/or platforms.
At Limina, we believe open platforms are the future and this is one of the reasons we founded the company.
Sometimes, an "open IMS platform" is confused with Open source investment portfolio management software. The latter means that the source code is free to use while the former means that the system embraces connectivity in its design.
Why should my firm consider an investment portfolio management system with an open platform?
Interest in open platform solutions is increasing given its promise to positively impact organisational returns through improved operational efficiencies, reduced risk, increased scalability and increased integration capabilities.
A recent Broadridge survey found that 94% of investment firms are facing challenges around effective data and that legacy technology is the biggest hurdle for firms. Firms investing in systems with an open platform will be able to configure them to achieve greater data insights from a wide variety of sources to better inform decisions and improve process efficiency. This includes, for example, custodians, traditional market data providers, ESG data, admins and more.
So, let’s take a look at the main benefits of using an open platform-based investment portfolio management system for your firm.
Access leading technologies
Having an open platform enables firms to access and use a wider selection of advanced digital technologies, without worrying about integration incompatibilities. With the flexibility that your investment portfolio management software then provides, your portfolio managers achieve a more comprehensive view of their investments. Given Front Office, and increasingly Middle Office, are the drivers of investment outcomes, this begs the question - do they have access to the tools they need?
Reduced operational risk
Open platform systems can lower operational risk because of how flexible they are. If your operations team discovers a problem in their processes, you can easily configure your system with a solution to address this. Because open systems can be seamlessly configured in any way you need, you can ensure your system works for you, not against you, when it comes to optimising operational efficiency.
Similarly, because open systems aren’t vendor-bound, you don’t need to worry about vendor lock-in. If you discover one part of your system isn’t working for your needs, you can easily swap it out for a better alternative without needing to dismantle the entire system, find a new vendor and halt your operations for extended periods.
Capture insights from many sources
Investment portfolio management systems using an open platform enables your firm to incorporate a wider variety of data from more sources, platforms, and providers to fuel deeper insights. By integrating with these various data sources that update in real-time, you can be confident that your portfolios are always accurate and up-to-date, and can leverage these best-of-breed data insights for more thorough investment decision-making.
Not only is the Limina IMS data vendor agnostic, but its flexible data models allow you to:
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Configure data channels to account for use cases like bespoke compliance rules.
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Trade new instruments not yet available with existing data providers.
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Overrule data providers’ data where the data provided is not accurate.
Transform unstructured data
Speaking of data, processing a large amount of data from various sources and dealing with its complexity can be a tricky challenge for any asset manager. But a modern investment management system, like Limina, which is built with an open platform, allows you to turn unstructured data into actionable information, with the capabilities to aggregate and analyse it, and gain a competitive advantage.
Transforming unstructured data into usable information can help you improve alpha, grow assets and better serve clients. Can you afford to miss out on the opportunity to improve investment returns through fast, informed and efficient decision-making?
The Limina IMS offers a consolidated source of real-time portfolio data, pooling all the data together, therefore making it actionable for both the front and middle office. This enables improved alignment across your workflows and better outcomes for your firm as a result.
What are the advantages of using Limina’s cloud-native platform?
Limina is the world’s first cloud-native investment management solution for institutional investors. The platform is built as an open platform and designed to offer the scalability and flexibility to meet the needs of asset management firms and uses APIs and advanced integration capabilities to help fuel growth.
Let’s drill down into the advantages you can expect from using our modern investment portfolio management software.
Scalability to accommodate your growth plans
Limina’s open platform can accommodate your growth without the need for extensive system changes, enabling your business to remain agile, flexible and easily scale at pace. Your firm will be able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances to future-proof itself for change in a fast-evolving landscape.
Legacy systems that are rigid and/or closed which don’t leverage the cloud will restrict your capabilities as your data and analysis requirements become more complex (as well as increasingly complex regulatory obligations). These systems also become more expensive to maintain and update as you grow, whereas the Limina platform is much more cost-efficient due to its flexibility, scalability and scope for adaptation.
Integration capabilities to increase efficiency
Our system is designed to easily integrate with different tools and systems to help you streamline your processes and boost operational efficiency.
Extensive configurability
We understand investment management is too complex for a one-size-fits-all system, that’s why our open platform is highly configurable and lets you configure the software to meet your specific business needs.
We believe that modern investment technology solutions should fit the asset management firm, not the other way around, so we work with each of our clients to integrate their systems and processes and help them to configure the platform to provide the best fit to achieve an end-to-end solution.
As your firm evolves, this innovative investment portfolio management system can easily be adapted to your changing needs alongside your organisational growth. And if you’re working across multiple asset classes, which adds complexity, the open platform allows you to accommodate this.
APIs to enhance your investment portfolio management system
With Limina’s APIs facilitating your integration needs, you can pull data from various sources and systems and consolidate it in one place making data more actionable. This helps to increase organisational efficiency and empower more informed decision-making. Expand specific data or functions by plugging in custom solutions via our APIs, and enjoy the sense of ease that comes with embedded data quality controls that guarantee data quality and consistency, always.
Limina’s investment portfolio management system was designed for asset managers by asset managers. Shaped by our experience, we know investment teams want to feel empowered, and not reliant on a system that just performs tasks. Our mission is to help asset managers like you overcome fragmented workflows and increase confidence in data quality and oversight.
Use case: How Limina’s investment portfolio management system helped drive Avanza’s growth
Nordic bank Avanza launched an asset management arm in 2006. In recent years, they’ve achieved fast growth, both in terms of the volume of funds released and the number of employees. They now have over USD 9 billion in assets under management and 17 funds.
Avanza needed a partner that could offer them an investment portfolio management software solution that was flexible and could easily integrate with all their current and future unknown service providers and systems. They also required the system to handle the full range of products they offer today and plan to offer in the future.
As a modern and extremely flexible platform, Limina was the perfect match for Avanza as they grew and expanded their product offerings further. Maria Wärn, CIO at Avanza, stated that “Limina will be an enabler for Avanza’s future growth in many areas and meet both the requirements and expectations of their compliance.”
Summary
As you can see, by using an investment portfolio management system like Limina, empowered by its open platform, you can transform your efficiency and capabilities and future-proof your firm for changing conditions, greater complexity and growth ambitions.
From accessing leading technologies and accommodating extensive data sources to reducing portfolio risk, our flexible and scalable software enables your firm to remain competitive and increase investment returns.
If you think it’s time to overhaul your existing systems and processes, explore Limina’s use cases and benefits page, speak to our expert team or book a tailored product demo and see how we empower your asset management team to thrive.
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