Merlin Securities Unbundles Multi-Prime Analytics Package

Merlin Securities said it would offer its MerlinSHARP analytics and reporting platform as a standalone software solution to a broader universe of money managers.

This marks a change in Merlin’s strategy since historically, the analytics package has only been made available to Merlin’s prime brokerage services clients. Users can access the unbundled version of the analytics package from the Internet on a software-as-a-service model.

Launched in 2004 as one of Merlin’s flagship products, MerlinSHARP (Shadow, Attribution, Risk, Performance) allows professional investors to seamlessly aggregate information from multiple prime brokers and custodians and produce customized reports. The software improves back-office efficiency by streamlining and automating manual processes, stated the company in this week’s release. At the same time, John Quartararo, partner at Merlin, has been named head of sales and marketing for Merlin Technology, the new division that was launched to provide the multi-prime, multi-custodian aggregation and analytics platform.

Commenting on the unbundling move, Quartararo, stated: “Merlin’s approach is to understand and address the needs of our clients and their need to meet the requirements of their investors. Now we are able to bring that approach to a much broader universe of money managers, including hedge funds, mutual funds, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Investors today require multi-prime and multi-custody arrangements; managed account capabilities; increased transparency; and portfolio, risk and attribution reporting. MerlinSHARP has long been an industry standard for helping money managers cost-effectively meet these needs.”

According to the release, MerlinSHARP facilitates transaction-based attribution, risk reporting, exposure over time analysis, and custom bucketing of portfolio characteristics. It also includes a customized reporting tool that allows investors to generate reports on-the-fly. In the same release, Steven Vermut, founder and managing partner of Merlin Securities, maintains that the standalone offering will help firms keep up with evolving business practices while allowing them to control their fixed expenses.

“Offering our core technology platform as a standalone solution is a natural progression for Merlin, given that we are, at our core, a technology company. I’m confident that this will be an attractive value proposition for a broad range of professional investors and asset managers globally.”

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio