Emergent dView Case Study
dView: Helping Emergent See Things Their Way
The Challenge
Founded in 1997, Emergent Asset Management is an award-winning, UK-based investment management firm. Their approach to performance analysis and risk management is unique and hinges around a graphical representation of the actual performance of individual trades relative to their stop-loss limits and target performance levels. This approach has enabled Emergent to turn good trading
ideas into consistently strong returns over the long-term.
Emergent had an existing Access and Excel portfolio management system, which had evolved in-house over the past five years. However, the system lacked the real-time risk and P&L capability and sophisticated charting functionality required to fully leverage their fund management style across a growing number of strategies, funds and managers.
The Solution
Emergent contracted Digiterre to develop a robust, scalable and highly functional
replacement for the in-house system. Digiterre’s modular dView component framework built within Microsoft. NET was used to satisfy the needs of Emergent’s users by providing a portfolio management application which would deliver:
Integration with market data vendors for
real-time P&L reporting.
- Integration with GlobeOp’s Kondor+ platform which provides Emergent with
intraday trade capture and fund administration services. - P&L and exposures calculated and stored at 15 minute intervals.
- Sophisticated, flexible charting to view risk and P&L over any time period for any group of trades.
Business Impact
The resulting system, known internally as TradeTracker, perfectly matched Emergent’s needs as a business. Once implemented, users continued to capture trades in Kondor+, which fit with Emergent’s existing workflows. Trades flow through intraday into the system and users maintain stop-loss and target levels within the system. The system calculates updated position, risk and performance numbers in near real-time throughout the day. Emergent’s trading and fund management teams monitor risk and performance of the funds using the system’s highly visual front end. Finally, because it is a true web-based application and users can access it using a browser from any location or device, Emergent are able to use the system to monitor risk and performance from different locations or while travelling.
dView: See the world your way
- dView is a component-based application framework built within Microsoft. NET.
- dView is designed to facilitate the rapid development of portfolio management
applications for hedge funds that have proprietary requirements that cannot be met
by traditional portfolio management applications. - dView components provide the ability to manage all trades, positions and market
data across all asset classes and calculate risk and P&L. - These components can be combined with custom code to meet the precise requirements of each client’s business.
- dView incorporates integration interfaces to a number of the large fund administrators such as GlobeOp.
- dView combines the flexibility benefits of a custom built system with the cost, speed
and robustness advantages of an off-the shelf portfolio management application.
The application is now locally installed at Emergent and remotely supported by Digiterre’s dView application support team.
Ravi Sawhney, Head of Trading Solutions at Digiterre concludes:
“The system met Emergent’s needs in full and illustrates how the dView application can be used to deliver a functional, flexible and robust front office system that meets client needs more comprehensively than packaged traditional portfolio management applications, and more effectively than a custom development.”