Performance and attribution data is the key to any investment management operation, but how do you ensure that information is readily and reliably available to those who need it? How do you cast those PEARLs of performance data before those who will appreciate it?
Performance and attribution is the process of measuring and attributing investment returns. In terms of investment management, it calculates the investment return of a manager’s portfolio based on asset allocation and selection of securities when compared to a benchmark. It’s about tracking the performance of a fund, and what has driven that performance.
So, when measuring the performance of a portfolio, it’s necessary to determine:
- What the return of individual securities was within the portfolio, and the portfolio as a whole
- How the return of the portfolio compares to its benchmark
When it comes to attribution, it’s about explaining the active return when you’ve beaten the benchmark:
- Contribution – this explains which securities contributed to the active return.
- Stock Selection – e.g. if your portfolio holds only half the stocks which are held in the benchmark, then selecting which stocks you hold is important.
- Timing – the entry into and exit out of a position at the optimal times will drive maximum returns.
There is a wide array of performance measurement and attribution (PMA) systems. AlphaCert has just released the integration module for PEARL from Ortec Finance which is one of the world’s leading PMA solutions.
Headquartered in Rotterdam, Ortec Finance has offices Amsterdam, London, Toronto, Hong Kong and in Zurich. They represent over 500 customers across 20 countries, with a 96% retention rate.
AlphaCert has connectors to easily and quickly integrate with Ortec PEARL. As a highly specialised calculation solution, PEARL runs processing overnight to calculate Performance & Attribution metrics across investment portfolios. AlphaCert currently supplies data to Ortec PEARL for our customers, and has a proven daily process for data integration.
A key benefit of this integration is that customers can use the same data set as their other 3rd party systems, models, or downstream applications. It comes back to one of the key attributes of the AlphaCert platform – a trusted “single source of truth” which puts investment managers in control.
Ortec PEARL is a standalone PMA system, and combined with AlphaCert’s ‘heavy lifting’ to cleanse and normalise the data; it means customers are making decisions using the highest quality data possible.
When it comes to integration, AlphaCert manages the following data Ortec PEARL:
- Soft and Hard Close Positions
- Soft and Hard Close Transactions
- Security Master
- Exchange Rates
- Crediting Rates
- Cash Flows
Performance and attribution calculations can be extracted for the latest valuation dates or for historic dates.
Outbound data integration from AlphaCert to Ortec PEARL includes all of the necessary mapping and transformation from AlphaCert’s single source of truth to Ortec PEARL’s expected data formats and standards.
At AlphaCert, we have a tightly-coupled integration with Ortec PEARL that’s easy to deploy. It’s ‘out of the box’ and ready to go, and the integration means there is quicker time to value for both Ortec PEARL and AlphaCert customers.
Find out more about how AlphaCert integrates with Ortec PEARL.