Investment Management Platform

Clients choose Limina to reduce their operational risk and improve their investment workflows. Essentially, the Limina Investment Management Platform is a foundation to adapt and grow their business.

Limina IMS is a cloud-native platform with embedded data management and extensive connectivity capabilities. Ultimately, the platform lets you worry less about managing technology and piecing together data. Instead of technology, you can focus on your core business – producing investment returns with minimal operational risk. 

Limina platform illustration

Cross-Asset Investment Management Platform in the cloud 

A 4th Generation Investment Management Platform is cloud-native and built for the sophisticated governance requirements of established Asset Managers. We call it Enterprise Investment Management SaaS. As far as we know, Limina is the only 4th Generation IMS Platform in the market. Most solutions today have either been:

  • Built before the cloud and then moved to the cloud (generation 2) or
  • Built for the cloud but too standardised to fit the governance requirements of a sophisticated asset manager (generation 3)

Born in the Cloud

A Cloud-based Investment Management Platform means you don’t have to worry about reliability and uptime, hosting costs, server maintenance and cyber security. Such concerns are ours to handle, not yours.

A generation 4 platform still enables you to choose the geography of your data storage. Additionally, your data is isolated from other clients’ data. This means you get a unique database, and don’t share it database with other clients of ours. 

As a result, the Investment Management Platform helps lower operational risk.

Cloud Based Investment Management System Overview
Purpose Built Solutions for Asset Managers

Sophistication for Established Investment Managers

A solution purpose-built for the complex and sophisticated requirements of an established Asset Manager includes concepts such as:

  • Optional 4-eye approval steps for data changes, not just for routing orders but other data changes as well
  • Data quality controls built into the investment and operations workflows
  • Ability to choose from various managed upgrade options that fit your operating model
  • Configurability in how to collect market data and analytics from multiple sources
  • Connectivity to interoperate with the asset manager’s system and data landscape (including in-house solutions)

Business Value Delivered Through the Investment Portfolio Platform

Limina’s cloud-native open platform – established in 2014 and continuously evolved since - is optimised for delivering business value:

  • Real-time views of investment data powered by an event-driven microservice architecture.
  • Powerful connectivity capabilities, including full API coverage and user-configurable import engine.
  • Enables efficient outsourcing initiatives through flexible connectivity and by allowing the outsourced team to work on the same platform.
  • A unified and extensible data model enables you to connect any data source and use the data in your investment workflows. You can also rely on Limina’s IBOR to power third-party solutions without the risk of data discrepancies.
Investment Management Platform UX
Access your Investment Management Platform from anywhere

Modern Technology to Empower a Distributed Workforce

Employee preferences and changes in business operations have facilitated greater choice for teams’ workplaces. Unfortunately, Investment Management Technology has made it difficult for operations and front office teams to work from different locations. Therefore, empowering your team with modern technology will also be a competitive advantage in long-term talent recruitment and retention.

Some examples of tangible benefits your team will see from using Limina’s cloud-native, Software-as-a-Service Investment Technology include:

  • Accessing the system instantly wherever you are via a web browser (no more VPN!)
  • Working efficiently with low-latency solutions that run just as fast on your old home laptop as your office workstation
  • Viewing alerts on your phone in meetings or when travelling
Screenshot custom classifications lowres

The rationale of a $9bn Asset Manager for moving from on-premise to Limina’s SaaS Solution

With an on-premise system, upgrades took a considerable amount of time and effort, and generally, we upgraded annually – meaning we had to wait a long time for software improvements. It also meant we had to spend valuable resources on non-core activities such as hosting and IT maintenance. With the modern-day cyber environment and frequency of security patching on critical systems, this was a manual, out-of-hours process that meant Production systems were unavailable. We strategically moved to SaaS for some critical systems so that our key systems can run in different environments, making BCP/DR more layered – giving us more options and less likelihood of all systems outage.

Head of Technology, $9bn Asset Manager

Zero IT-footprint with Limina's Investment Management Platform

Continuing fee pressure, increasing regulatory requirements, and investor demands for transparency and reporting are all challenges for the overall industry. It is forcing investment managers to do more - with less.

A big part of the solution can come by revising your technology landscape:

  • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provides a significant cost reduction compared to traditional solutions. We’ve done a special deep-dive about the 8 drivers of the total cost of ownership for an Investment Management System.
  • Unlock exception-based workflows, where your team can focus on issue resolution and let the system handle issue identification. Or put another way: less manual tasks and more focus on investment returns
  • Let the system quality control data for you 
Cost Pressure for Investment Management Platforms

A Unified and Extensible Cross-Asset Data Model

The benefit of a centralised data set includes the avoidance of data synchronisation issues such as data gaps, timing issues and cost of maintenance. To get the full value of such centralised data, it needs to be standardised across asset classes and functional areas – which is the case with Limina.

The entire team, from portfolio managers and traders to compliance and operations, always see the needed data with Limina. Learn more about how our Cash and Position Management Solution (IBOR) and Investment Data Management Solution enable this.

Generation 3 IBOR
Custom classifications for Investment Management Platforms

The enabler is that the data model is fit for purpose - for everyone in the team:

  • Can the data be trusted (e.g., are quality control processes in place, including for proprietary data sets)?
  • Can data be viewed in different states (e.g., confirmed vs. preliminary; pre-trade vs. settled)?
  • Are data models agnostic, or dependent on a specific market data vendor? Can your team use different solutions (e.g., terminals), or do they all need to pick the same regardless of, e.g. asset class managed?
  • Can data be enriched to include information needed for the various teams? (e.g., analytics for portfolio managers, classifications for compliance rules, etc.)
  • Are data models properly centralised or divided into silos, requiring inefficient collation to arrive at a complete portfolio view (e.g., are there different transaction definitions depending on asset class)?

We have designed Limina IMS with these fundamental considerations in mind. The result is a platform that is easy to implement, suitable to be the central source of truth, and able to co-exist with an external IBOR/ABOR.

Open IMS platform Architecture That Fits Into Your Partner Ecosystem

At its core, Limina IMS has an open platform architecture that advocates connectivity and smooth end-to-end workflows - even when those workflows involve 3rd party solutions. Unlike closed-ended platforms, Limina IMS is not limited to any specific 3rd party solutions and does not force you to choose any particular 3rd party provider. Instead, connectivity is a core component of the system design.

1. Managed Integrations

The platform contains managed, out-of-the-box connectivity towards our partner ecosystem. Integrated partners include many of the most popular industry solutions in market data, analytics, trading, and performance & risk solutions.

2. Configurable Import & Export

Limina IMS includes a unique configurable import/export application. Non-technical users can easily design integrations using intuitive drag & drop functionality to allow for automation of many workflows that traditionally have been manual. 

Examples include file-based integrations with in-house systems or custodians.

3. APIs

The platform’s micro-service architecture exposes full API coverage: REST APIs for HTTP requests and WebSocket APIs for streaming data. These APIs enable any data to be integrated with or for outside solutions to conduct actions within the Limina IMS.

Our investment data management capabilities include a data quality control framework that can monitor integrations from a timing and data quality perspective. Automating data feeds (while maintaining complete oversight) is perhaps the most essential step to adopting an exception-based approach to asset management operations and, ultimately, enabling your business to focus on investment returns.

Limina Investment Management Connectivity

Principles

We started our mission in 2014 with a blank canvas and a set of principles that we believe are critical for how an Investment Management System (IMS) should be built and delivered:

OPEN

We believe an IMS should enable change by connecting to any 3rd party system or service provider. If you want to launch new funds or change your operating model, an open IMS should make that faster and more cost-efficient.

EXCEPTION-BASED

Trusting the data in the system is essential for Front Office decisions and governance in operational processes. Your team shouldn’t have to spend valuable time tracking down potential issues; the system should find and flag them automatically.

SUPPORTED BY PEERS

We believe the best customer support for Asset Managers comes when the team you work with have experience in Investment Management. Dedicated team members from the industry learn your business and can assist you most effectively.

HOLISTIC & CROSS-ASSET

An IMS should be cross-asset and cover workflows from start to finish without jumping between systems. This increases productivity, allows superior oversight, and enables operational controls.