Storebrand Asset Management, Norway’s largest private asset manager with EUR 71 billion in assets under management, has added SimCorp’s front office and fund management solutions in order to automate and standardize investment processes front to back.
SimCorp is a Copenhagen-based provider of investment management solutions and services to the global financial services industry. The decision to partner with SimCorp is likely to result in a significant reduction of costs, while ensuring the scalability necessary for future growth.
Erik Kaland, Chief Operations Officer of Storebrand Asset Management, said:
“In a relatively short period of time, SimCorp has helped to completely transform our front office and fund platforms, successfully replacing our legacy systems with a far superior and automated platform, across front to back. With a more standardized configuration and centralized architecture, we have not only significantly reduced operational risk and cost of ownership, but equally important, positioned ourselves strongly, as we continue to seek new market and growth opportunities.”
StoreBrand AM selected SimCorp Dimension as its core engine to unify its operational infrastructure in 2016, which allowed its fixed income, currency and equities teams to be live on SimCorp Dimension, running both active and passive investments across the entire range of financial instruments. The new solutions integrate with Storebrand Asset Management’s existing use of SimCorp Dimension in the middle and back office.
The integration of SimCorp Dimension from the front to back office will also improve StoreBrand AM’s capabilities of managing its share of Norwegian private funds savings market which has quadrupled from 4 to 17% following the acquisition of Norwegian active management firm, Skagen.
Klaus Holse, Chief Executive Officer of SimCorp, said:
“Storebrand Asset Management is a prime example of the challenge faced by many buy-side firms, where historical reliance on best-of-breed and legacy technology stand in the way of future business growth. Having realized the operational and strategic benefits of a consolidated model, Storebrand has demonstrated how to take effective action and break away from the status quo of ineffective technology. The achievements they have gained across the investment value chain provide a strong competitive advantage and make Storebrand Asset Management a well-deserved winner of the SimCorp Award 2018.”
SimCorp’s fund solutions may improve Storebrand Asset Management’s Straight Through Processing (STP) for all funds, the time spent on error management, time to market, global expansion, and operational maintenance and dependency on key staff. The consolidation strategy has resulted in decommissioning a number of systems, including external risk and OMS/EMS systems, saving EUR 1 million annually. The replacement of manual solutions and spreadsheets has resulted in a 58% reduction in post-trade compliance breaks.
