Country Focus: Japan
With only 5% of Japanese household assets allocated to investment trusts, there is tremendous growth potential for Japan’s asset management industry. Since 2003, Charles River Development has provided Japanese asset managers with technology and support to scale their investment operations. According to Cameron Field, Managing Director-APAC, Charles River Development, Charles River continues to enhance its local presence and product functionality to meet the unique needs of Japan’s asset managers.
“Many system vendors come to Japan only to discover that their out-of-the-box products don’t work here,” says Field. “Charles River’s end-to-end solution allows Japanese asset managers to customize workflows for their country- and company-specific requirements.”
For example, a flexible trade-placement check tool in the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) allows Japanese domestic equity traders to run trading and compliance checks at the time of placement – over and above the more common practise of pre-trade compliance. As a result, traders can automatically track important regulatory and market-practise controls, including cross-trade checking, time checks, limit price, and lot size rules. For fixed income managers, Charles River IMS provides extensive support for both domestic and international bonds, as well as advanced analytics for derivative instruments. Another key feature for Japanese traders is the ability to switch between order-centric and placement-centric views of their trades – ensuring intuitive and efficient management of very large volumes of placements across their books.
Variations in how regulatory rules are interpreted in Japan pose additional challenges for local asset managers wishing to automate rule checking. Charles River IMS allows clients to automatically check regulatory, mandate and in-house guidelines throughout the investment management process – while providing flexibility to apply personal interpretations of rules.
Charles River IMS supports English-, Japanese-, and Chinese-character sets, allowing clients to implement the system in a language that best meets their needs. In addition, the system’s open, standard-based, service-oriented architecture integrates seamlessly with environments that rely on client-specific functionality. For its Japanese client base, Charles River IMS can provide client-specific commission calculations, cross-trade checks, as well as custom interpretations of various block-trading and allocation methodologies, such as ‘ikkatsu hattchu’ and ‘heiken tanka.’ The system also integrates with end-user computer (EUC) tools, such as Excel spreadsheets and Access databases, which are widely used in Japan for fund management, trade order and execution, and compliance strategies.
Charles River serves more than 50 clients across Asia Pacific, including 16 buy-side firms in Japan. These include several of the country’s Top 10 investment firms.
For more information on Charles River’s products and services in Japan, please contact Megumi Masuda, Regional Sales & Relationship Management Coordinator, +81 3 3507 5783, or MegumiMasuda@crd.com.