Investment Management Newsflashes: VanthedgePoint Bolsters Hedge Fund Services, and more

VanthedgePoint Bolsters Hedge Fund Services

VanthedgePoint Group, an integrated financial services company focusing on small hedge funds, has chosen SunGard's Phase3 multi-asset, multicurrency securities processing solution and SunGard's Margin Advisor, a solution that monitors cross-asset margin information in real time. VanthedgePoint will use Phase3 and Margin Advisor to help deliver operations and margin services to its hedge fund customers, and support its introduction of options trading, according to the company.

"Our goal is to deliver an integrated suite of high-quality, cost-effective services that help empower our small hedge fund customers and meet our time-to-market requirements," said Geoffrey M. Tudisco, chief executive officer and founder of VanthedgePoint Group. "We chose Phase3 and Margin Advisor for their real-time processing capabilities and flexible technology infrastructure, and because Phase3's comprehensive capabilities help us to expand our product offering quickly to meet client demand. We chose SunGard for its stability, vision and sensitivity to our short- and long-term business needs."

VanthedgePoint will use Phase3 to help bolster its unique, integrated solution for providing clients with order to settlement back-office services for improved operational stability. Margin Advisor will generate intraday margin calculations across product lines and monitor prices and positions in real time, helping VanthedgePoint customers to manage credit exposure, risk, securities lending and hypothecation. Both solutions will be delivered in an ASP environment, scheduled to go live at VanthedgePoint this month.

Lava Trading Selects GAIN for Reference Data Management

New York-based Lava Trading has selected AIM Software's data management platform GAIN for the integration of price, static and corporate actions data provided by Telekurs Financial's Valor Data Feed (VDF).

Lava, a developer of high-performance trading solutions for the financial services industry, required a data integration platform that supports the direct input of Telekurs VDF equities, corporate actions and options data into its SQL server environment. Lava chose AIM Software's GAIN solution to improve the efficiency of its internal data management processes by creating centralized data workflows, according to the release.

The scalable GAIN platform features batch file requests and returns exit codes for escalation purposes. Once launched, the software synchronizes the VDF security master file with the incoming delta files. Options, equity and corporate actions data for North American securities are loaded daily.

"With Telekurs VDF as our main data source, it was becoming necessary to implement optimal data centralization strategies and straight-through processes," said John R. Ehlers, senior vice president and head of business services, Lava Trading. "AIM's platform efficiently addressed this need."

CSC Licenses Wealth Management Software To Three Insurers

Three North American life insurance and annuity companies, including Pacific Life Insurance Company, have selected Computer Sciences Corp.'s (CSC) new wealth management administration software, Wealth Management Accelerator.

As individuals with significant assets approach and begin retirement, wealth management products provide them with a type of investment account they can continue to grow even as the account streams periodic disbursements to them. CSC's Wealth Management Accelerator simplifies IT maintenance by providing a single comprehensive administration system for both asset accumulation and disbursement. With Wealth Management Accelerator, insurers can rapidly introduce innovative wealth management features in a single contract and then administer the policies with one system, according to the release.

"Baby Boomers entering their retirement years need more sophisticated personal asset management products," said Michael W. Risley, president of the life and annuity Division of CSC's Financial Services Group. "With Wealth Management Accelerator, CSC is delivering the results insurers need to capture a share of this new market opportunity."