Technology managers at asset management firms understand the challenge of balancing spending and investments at a time when fee compression is common.?However, technology itself is an investment; choosing the right systems and services can?provide?the type of intelligence that generates a true advantage.?One?technology that offers a chance at differentiation – with?additional?efficiency benefits?– is data-as-a-service?(DaaS).

DaaS?has many implications for the asset management industry. For example: Operations teams?are required to?capture markets?data, benchmarks, and index data on a daily, if not real time, basis. The maintenance and frequent development cycles?required?to support this is costly and resource intensive. Organizations that turn this effort over?to?industry experts, will be able to lower costs and direct their development resources toward more impactful projects.

Unfortunately,?in many?financial services?firms,?a majority of?technology dollars are committed to keeping back-office wheels turning,?supporting?and?maintaining?utilities that are?essential to keeping the business running.?Utility?development is not a differentiator but requires?ongoing?dollars and staff attention.?These efforts can be time consuming, expensive, and lock resources into protracted?ongoing maintenance.

Complicating this situation,?firms?struggle to attract?talent in back-office support?departments. Talent is drawn to specialized technology firms, where technology is the product, as opposed to the back-office function of an asset management firm?where technology is an expense to be managed.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to this challenge. Specialized firms now?provide?suites of tools that are easy to implement,?maintain, and allow staff to concentrate efforts on?objectives?that may differentiate their firm from their peers.?Using?DaaS, firms can more efficiently manage their?data and gain differentiation benefits needed to thrive in a competitive environment.

Clearwater’s?DaaS?offering is made for investment data and is a cloud-native product that transparently delivers multi-asset-class data from any custodian, service or data provider,?client?or vendor platform.?DaaS?facilitates a comprehensive view into all your assets, holdings, cash, and performance across all asset classes, regions, business units, and corresponding platforms.

Here at Clearwater, we are?leveraging?our industry-leading?expertise?in cloud-native, SaaS technology to deliver a suite of data products that?provide?transparency, flexibility, and?customization. Our products enable users to select and curate custom data sets, configure data delivery, and?customize?reporting.

What Clearwater’s Data–as–a-Service?offers:

• Aggregation?engine
• Validation?engine
• Investment?data?warehouse
• Insight into data lineage
• An API to ingest data
• Reporting?as a service

As a specialized technology vendor,?Clearwater?offers?attractive opportunities to rescue financial services firms from ongoing utility maintenance based on the following:

• As true subject matter experts,?Clearwater has?the skills necessary to assure clients that excellence in their?discipline?is always provided, guaranteeing effective implementation and?high-quality?support.
• Clearwater’s?DaaS?product?allows?firms?to remain competitive by?offering the?back-office support they need to?aggregate data?and?consolidate?reporting into one view.
• Delivery of?DaaS?via the?SaaS?model assures quick implementation?and?zero?data center investment.?Speed to market and?back-end?simplification are immediate benefits
• Technology management can direct dollars, and staff?resources,?in such a way that?optimizes?talent, technology investment, and differentiation, resulting in differentiation and competitive advantage.