dView Emergent Asset Management Case Study
dView: Helping Emergent Asset Management 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-theshelf 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 application.”