Boston, Beijing, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo – September 9, 2010 – Charles River Development (Charles River), a front- and middle-office investment software solutions provider, today announced that C.S. McKee, a Pittsburgh-based, full service institutional money manager, is live on the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) for automated front- and middle-office support across its domestic equity and fixed income investment management operations. The firm also leverages the Charles River Network for real-time electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange). The two-phased project delivered significant efficiencies in portfolio and order management; ensured real-time compliance monitoring; and for the first time, enabled C.S. McKee to access domestic liquidity via FIX trading.
The project is part ofC.S. McKee’s strategic initiative to automate and streamline workflows via a single platform. During the initial phase, Charles River centralized portfolio-level compliance monitoring. The second phase consolidated portfolio management and trading capabilities across C.S. McKee’s Equity and Fixed Income desks.
“For many years, we operated on separate equity and fixed income platforms,” saidUlf Skreppen, Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer and Operations Manager. “Charles River IMS allowed us to consolidate our products onto a single platform. It will also help us meet the growing demands of our clients by increasing investment management capabilities, streamlining processes, and reducing operational risk across the board. With the Charles River system in place, we believe that we raised the bar for what we can offer clients, now, and into the future.”
“From our very first meeting, Charles River’s experts understood our business requirements,” said Len Boss, Vice President Operations. “The implementation team configured the system to deliver real value for our firm by increasing the accuracy and efficiency of our workflows. We now have the tools and confidence to easily trade and monitor any order in real-time.”
Charles River’s open architecture allowed C.S. McKee to easily integrate with an internal data ware-house for accounting and security master data.
Real-time electronic FIX trading through the Charles River Network connects C.S. McKee to its preferred sell-side brokers via Charles River’s low-cost, internet-based Virtual Private Network option. The full integration of Charles River IMS and the Charles River Network offers C.S. McKee a single point of contact for both its investment management and electronic trading/FIX-related needs.
About C.S. McKee
C.S. McKee, LP, manages pension funds, profit-sharing plans, reserve funds, endowments and other financial assets for municipalities, unions, corporations, foundations, hospitals, schools, religious organizations and other institutions.
Founded in 1931, the Pittsburgh-based firm of professional managers has approximately $10.1 billion under management in over 450 equity, fixed income and balanced portfolios (as of June 30, 2010).
About Charles River Development
Charles River Development is a front- and middle-office software solutions provider to more than 300 investment firms in the institutional asset/fund management, wealth management/trust, alternative investment management, insurance, pension fund and fund administration/custody markets in over 35 countries. The Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) is an institutional-class multi-asset, multi-currency software suite that consists of five main modules: Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modeling; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade, in-trade, post-execution and end-of-day compliance monitoring; Charles River Trader for order management, electronic trading and execution management; Charles River Post-Trade for the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation, and settlement workflow; and Charles River Performance for daily performance measurement, attribution, and performance risk.
Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Message-based APIs and exposed Web Services facilitate rapid systems integration. The system is fully integrated with the Charles River Network, a broker-neutral, financial network that incorporates global real-time electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange). Charles River also offers comprehensive FIX network and implementation services, as well as hosting and application management solutions.
Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in Beijing, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo and has a local presence in every other major financial center of the world.