Public Investment Corporation, the investment management arm of the Republic of South Africa, has gone live on the Charles River Investment Management System across its fixed income and money market operations. As a result, PIC users are now able to access automated decision support and streamlined trade order management on a consolidated platform.

PIC has become one of the largest fixed income and money market investment managers in Africa, with approximately more than US$100 billion in assets under management. The implementation supported the government agency's strategy of retaining market leadership by streamlining trading activities and improving portfolio modeling and management capabilities.

"Our role is to invest funds on behalf of public sector clients - based on investment mandates set by each client and approved by the Financial Services Board (FSB)," said Leon Smit, general manager of fixed income and dealing, PIC."Our portfolio managers and traders now know they can meet clients' varied demands with a more sophisticated approach. For example, instead of manual spreadsheets, portfolio managers have a common technology for modeling money market portfolios against local indices -including the Bond Exchange Association of South Africa All Bond Index (ALBI) and short-term fixed interest benchmarks (STeFI)."

Public Investment Corporation Limited (PIC) manages assets valued at R739.7 billion as at March 31, 2009, making it one of the largest investment managers on the African continent. The firm's clients include pension, provident, social security or guardian funds.