Cooper Investors Chooses Charles River IMS, and more

Charles River IMS Automates Cooper Investors' Fund Management Operations

Cooper Investors P/L has implemented the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) from Charles River Development to support its Melbourne asset management operations. Cooper Investors, a specialist in the management of equity funds, serves large pension and superannuation funds, high net worth individuals, Australian State Government agencies, charities and top 100 corporations.

Charles River IMS is a front-to-middle office software suite for portfolio management and modeling, order management and electronic trading, real-time compliance monitoring, and the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation and settlement workflow. Part of Cooper Investors' criteria for selecting a new system was geography, explains Peter Cooper, managing director of the firm.

"We required a firm with not only local presence, but also with local and global market expertise and capabilities, specifically in the Australian equity market and on the FIX protocol," said Cooper, in a release. "By implementing Charles River IMS and FIX messaging we have a seamless trade workflow, which provides complete support for all investment classes, foreign and domestic exchanges, and all trade message types. Charles River IMS' automated electronic allocations, compliance capabilities and extensive modeling features greatly improve our workflow and allow us to eliminate manual updates to Excel spreadsheets. Charles River IMS greatly enhances our risk management processes."

Concord Equity Group Advisors Selects Exstream Software's Dialogue

Concord Equity Group Advisors, an outsourced wealth management solution provider, has selected Dialogue enterprise personalization software from Exstream Software to provide its financial services clients with turnkey solutions for delivering clearer, more relevant on-demand financial reporting to their clients. Concord also plans to use Dialogue as a rapid development prototype tool to assist clients in testing the viability of sales and marketing campaigns without a major investment.

Concord's clients will have the option of using a Web browser to create rules-based variable content for incorporation into documents at run time. Additionally, Concord will take advantage of Dialogue's ability to include a variety of data-driven charts to help clients differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace.

"In a global economy, you can't be experts at everything and you don't have to be. Adding Dialogue to our core offerings adds significantly to the ease of outsourcing for our clients," said Lee Argush, executive managing director for Concord Equity Group Advisors, in a release. "With Dialogue, we can offer clients the ability to directly collaborate on document creation over the Web, or we can house a library of components for them to create their personalized documents. Either way, we make it possible to dynamically build correspondence that is more meaningful to the recipient. In both instances, time and money will be saved, which makes everyone happy."

Tasmania's Retirement Benefits Fund Using Workflow Solution From DSTi

DST International (DSTi) announced Tasmania's Retirement Benefits Fund (RBF) has gone live with the first phase of its multi-stage implementation of DSTi's automated workflow solution, AWD.

The solution has allowed Tasmania's public sector superannuation fund to implement new business processes and practices that will improve efficiency and customer service levels while delivering annual business efficiency gains. RBF has redesigned business processes to increase automation, boost compliance levels and reduce duplication, processing and filing costs. Phase one of the project included a contact management solution, electronic document management, integration of Web processes, some workflow and management reporting. "By moving away from manual processes we will be able to service our members with more accurate information in real time. Previously, staff had to request a file and it could take 24 hours before the query was answered," RBF's CEO Simon Gilles said, in a release. "As well as improving efficiency and customer service, we will also be able to reduce our business risk through the consistent adoption of processes throughout the organization."

Phase two of the rollout will extend the workflow functionality including the implementation of straight-through processing. Tasmanian-owned and operated, RBF was established in 1904. Membership is available to all Tasmanian public sector employees and their partners.