CEO comment: Moving out of the shadow of financial crisis
by CEO Peter L. Ravn
When the current financial crisis broke in 2008, few could foresee the enormous repercussions this would have on our industry. With the collapse of some major financial institutions, confidence in the industry declined and as a direct result, we have seen a wave – one might even call it tsunami – of regulatory reform sweeping over us.
In the wake of this wave, the current more hostile business climate first and foremost calls for greater transparency across the board, whether in the area of products, processes or costs. Lack of transparency, particularly in gauging operational costs, frequently leads to uncertainty and loss of confidence. A clear approach is necessary to ensure long-term sustainable cost savings and the role of the IT platform is vital in the overall operational strategy.
As global investment management companies battle on all fronts in the prevailing climate, structured investment strategies have become part of the overall business strategy in many companies, and a range of alternatives have come into focus, e.g. outsourcing, SaaS, BPM, cloud computing, etc., as examined in more detail in our lead article 'Controlling operational costs: chosing the right IT strategy to manage costs' and in subsequent external contributions to this issue.
In order to move out of the shadow of the financial crisis, we need to start considering a related and equally important question: how is faith in our industry restored? How do we as the buy-side community regain the confidence of the market? What can we as solution providers, investment managers, industry practitioners and the like do to help drive investment performance?
Restoring confidence in the industry is in my mind strongly dependent on our ability as a market-leading financial software provider to come up with solutions that can reconcile cost with growth and establish the parameters for improved transparency in all elements of the investment process. Continuously being able to deliver solutions to control and indeed reduce operational cost is a key ingredient in these efforts to improve efficiency and generate better returns.
SimCorp’s commitment to delivering solutions and sharing knowledge in an open manner was clearly reflected in the SimCorp Dimension International User Community Meeting (IUCM) in Stockholm on 28–30 September. Theme of the 14th consecutive conference was ‘Rising to the future’ and the event was attended by no less than 382 external delegates, which marked a 35% increase on 2010 levels.
As reported in greater detail in our feature article 'Rising to the future of investment management: SimCorp hosts seminal industry event', the event encompassed an unprecedented number of popular pre-conference focus groups, plenary sessions, workshops and domain breakout streams, proving fertile ground for the next event, to be held in Switzerland.
The conference programme also showcased the SimCorp StrategyLab award for excellence in growth management, which this year went to Dealis Fund Operations GmbH, and which is the focus of the separate article 'Excellence in growth management: Dealis Fund Operations GmbH'.
With great anticipation of and confidence in another year of exciting and challenging developments, I would like to wish all our readers a happy and prosperous 2012 on behalf of everyone at SimCorp.
Peter L. Ravn, Ph.D., is CEO at SimCorp.
