10:01 AM
DS Set to Release New Products for Wrap Industry
Integrated Decision Systems, a provider of investment management systems, is gearing up to release two new products for the Wrap-fee industry. One, TAXeMIZER, automates investment tax consequences, and resides as a module in IDS's GIM II investment management system. The other, Caliper, is a stand-alone performance measurement system that reportedly can handle millions of accounts, perfect for the wrap-fee business.
According to Madelyn Jackrel, executive vice president of IDS, a number of firms which are long-time users of GIM II for their wrap-fee administration, are already testing TAXeMIZER. While GIM II has long been able to calculate short-term and long-term tax lot processing, the new module provides a whole new level of codes for "distinguishing both high-cost short- and long-term consequences, and low-cost short- and long-term consequences.
"With TAXeMIZER, you'll be able to streamline your tax lots liquidations online and be able to earmark them in the selling process," says a spokeswoman for the company.
This is only the first phase of the product release, and Jackrel says further releases will make it easier for managers to marry their clients' investment objectives to taxable gains/losses, a necessary function in the high-volume world of wrap-fee administration.
Caliper, an AIMR- and GIPS-compliant performance measurement product, is to be released in the Autumn timeframe. Jackrel says the system relies on much of the calculation methodology that IDS has derived through its years of developing GIM II, but, as a stand-alone system, it is infinitely more scaleable. "Rather than talking about hundreds of thousands of accounts, we're talking millions," she adds.
"We've had the methodology in place with GIM II, and we're using that production-quality code for Caliper's methodology, but we're changing the schema and a lot of ways we use the technical aspects of the database. We have changed the way numbers are read into and out of the part of the system that does the calculating, in order to reach those higher volumes."
As a stand-alone system, Caliper integrates with any number of accounting systems and report-publishing packages. "The openness comes from our using a relational database," says Jackrel. "We do have a powerful data download tool for creating interfaces for importing and exporting out of the system."