Arming David

It is unbelievable - in its March 2006 issue Willmott Magazine wrote: Arming David - in a market of Goliath able to justify huge spend on enterprise management how are the numerous small capital management houses to meet regulatory pressures whilst remaining cost effective.


In the article, a prototype of such CM firm was sketched with approx EUR 1 Billion in assets under management, having the top management, fund and risk managers tightly collaborating, with short decision cycles, but with deal types across most of the asset classes and all complexity degrees. With functional and operational requirements that are not so different from those of a large bank.
OK, their number of positions is lower and they are more focused in terms of strategies, market segments and volumes. Legally, they are a bank and need to report to the regulators.

At that time we set up the UnRisk options for this target groups. Now, a core target group.
The challenges: build a big system for the small, highly automated, with a high throughput on a minimalist infrastructure, integrating valuation and data management with a web front-end making it easily accessible via any (smart) device that runs a web browser.

We knew, to achieve this ambitious objective, we need to tie our optimized C++ engines together with the latest technologies and parallelize services that call them millions of time. And program hybrid in C++, Java, SQL and Mathematica exploiting the benefits of each of those environment.

Now, we know our predictions were right, we have released the UnRisk FACTORY Capital Manager (extending the UnRisk FACTORY and the VaR Universe ... ) two years ago, the prototypical market participant above, could now be named: Schoellerbank Invest AG, and we enjoy a fast growing customer base in this segment. Capital Management Firms, Asset Management Departments of smaller insurances, Funds, .... the success is amazing.

The article can be found  here.