South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation Live on Charles River IMS
On-time, on-budget implementation automates workflows, delivers scalability for future growth
Boston, London, Beijing, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo – November 25, 2009 – Charles River Development (Charles River), a front- and middle-office software solutions provider for investment firms, today announced that the Public Investment Corporation Ltd (PIC), the investment management arm of the Republic of South Africa, is live on the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) across its fixed income and money market operations. PIC users now benefit from automated decision support and streamlined trade order management on a single, consolidated platform.
PIC has become one of the largest fixed income and money market investment managers in Africa, with approximately USD$100 billion in assets under management. The implementation, delivered on-time and on-budget, supported the government agency’s strategy of retaining market leadership by streamlining trading activities and significantly enhancing 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). We now have a solid foundation for fixed income modeling and trading to build upon.”
According to Precious Chikwata, PIC’s Project Manager, Charles River’s deep understanding of PIC’s business and operational needs ensured an extremely well-run project that exceeded expectations. “Besides implementing the system on-time and on-budget, Charles River’s experts customized on-site training based on our unique requirements – advanced portfolio modeling capabilities and South Africa’s fixed income and money market instruments.”
“We develop solutions in line with local buy-side needs,” said Jon Steward, Managing Director-EMEA, Charles River Development. “Our proven system gives clients like PIC the technology and control to support South Africa-specific instruments, handle fixed income pricing, and create ‘what-if’ scenarios.”
About Public Investment Corporation Limited
Public Investment Corporation Limited (PIC) manages assets valued at R739,7 billion as at March 31, 2009, making us one of the largest investment managers on the African continent. Our clients are public sector entities, most of which are pension, provident, social security or guardian funds. PIC’s role is to invest funds on behalf of these clients, based on investment mandates set by each client and approved by the Financial Services Board (FSB), with which we are registered as a financial services provider.
PIC is wholly owned by the South African government, with the Minister of Finance as shareholder representative. PIC was established as a corporation on April 1, 2005 in accordance with the Public Investment Corporation Act, 2004. Corporatization has enabled us to structure our investment activities and operations in a manner comparable to that of private sector investment managers. Apart from pursuing FSB-compliant mandates, we benchmark our investment performance against market-driven indices, enabling our clients and shareholder to compare PIC’s returns to those achieved in the marketplace.
About Charles River Development
Charles River Development is a front- and middle-office software solutions provider for investment firms, serving over 300 clients in 30 countries representing the institutional, wealth management/trust, alternative, mutual fund, insurance, pension fund and fund administration/custody markets. The Charles River Investment Management System is a comprehensive front- and middle-office software suite for all asset classes that includes: Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modeling; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade, post-execution, and end-of-day compliance; Charles River Trader for order management, electronic trading and execution management; and Charles River Post-Trade for the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation, and settlement workflow.
The system incorporates global real-time electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange) through the Charles River Network, a broker-neutral financial network that is fully integrated with Charles River IMS.
Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Message-based APIs and exposed Web Services facilitate rapid systems integration.
The company also offers implementation, application management services and hosting solutions. Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in Beijing, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo and has a local presence in every other major financial center of the world.
Charles River is the recipient of numerous recent industry awards including: Best Buy-Side Order Management System and Best Integrated Front-Office Platform, Buy-Side Technology 2009 Awards; Best Risk Management System, AsianInvestor 2009 Service Provider Awards; and FinTech Top 100, American Banker/Financial Insights 2009. |
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