Tools to boost performance

Wealth managers need specialist tools for investment selection and analysis. Brainpower has developed an analytics platform and off-the-shelf products to meet these needs.

Investors, both professional and private, are not only demanding accurate information but also sophisticated tools that can analyse vast quantities of data and help them improve investment advice and decisions. Traditionally, professional investors have had to develop proprietary analysis tools, purchase disparate packaged software or rely on third-party aid. Private investors could not access relatively unsophisticated investment tools without calling on their full service brokers. Even then, the analysis often left much to be desired. Brainpower specialises in meeting wealth managers’ needs for systems offering powerful equity or fund selection and analysis, improved matching of investment solutions to customer profiles and timely product or investment alerts. Chices for wealth management Brainpower’s NetXceed platform is designed to be an analytics warehouse – a central collector of financial information and a multi-channel delivery engine of decision support and advisory functionality. Market information, investment strategies, client and model portfolios, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and order routing integrate seamlessly with the NetXceed environment, supporting front-office applications used by private bankers, analysts, online retail and asset managers. Off-the-shelf tools built to exploit Brainpower’s platform include Finest for equity analysis and Top Funds for funds analysis. Finest is a mission-critical tool available to help equity asset managers achieve superior investment performance. Designed by fund managers for fund managers, it provides a user-friendly graphical interface with a comprehensive global equities database and a broad range of sophisticated analytical functions. Finest is flexible in supporting analysis of securities and portfolio optimisation for different investment strategies, supporting top-down as well as bottom-up approaches. Users can combine fundamental, technical and quantitative analysis using more than 200 indicators. Each indicator can be weighted according to individual risk profiles or investment objectives. Brainpower Top Funds is an innovative software tool designed for fund evaluation, portfolio construction, weighting, monitoring and marketing. It can be used to develop model client fund portfolios and design tactical asset allocations that specifically address individual profiles. Institutional fund selectors, portfolio managers and intermediaries can evaluate and select funds on a comprehensive range of more than 100 predefined or custom indicators. Funds can be combined into a portfolio or fund-of-funds and weighted according to specified risk and return constraints. The tools enable in-depth analysis of quantitative data and investment styles, while alternative portfolios can be compared, monitored and rebalanced as required. Brainpower Finest and Top Funds solutions are modular and include such functions as importing proprietary data – that is, holdings data or internally developed algorithms – filtering universes of stocks or funds according to investment requirements, or weighting investments according to portfolio constraints and risk/return profiles. Other functions include analysing the impact of market movements on portfolios (see screen), comparing and analysing multiple portfolios, quantitative or sophisticated in-depth analysis of portfolio returns, benchmarking and dynamic reporting, otherwise known as generating automated client reports and custom fact sheets. Implementing the system Banca Steinhauslin, founded in 1868 to manage the wealth of rich Florentine families, is one of the most respected Italian private banks. It prides itself on combining traditional approaches with innovative processes. One of the bank’s key strengths is its network of high level private banking professionals with access to sophisticated consulting tools. The bank wanted to expand these tools with an Intranet-based service that advisers could use for fund selection and analysis, helping them to identify the right fund or funds for each individual private client. The proposed solution was based on Brainpower Top Funds and built on the NetXceed platform. The technology was customised to provide the bank with an Intranet-based fund analyser that could integrate with Steinhauslin’s in-house rating system. The adviser can search for suitable funds using the analyser’s top-down or bottom-up approach. Selection can be made via two routes: following a push logic that starts with the best performing funds; or using the pull function which generates a shortlist of funds from a selection of parameters. These approaches satisfy the requirements of both advisers and clients. Stefano Malferrari, director general of Banca Steinhauslin, says: “Our considerable experience in private banking coupled with Brainpower’s technology gives us a definite competitive advantage.” The analyser is now an essential decision support tool at Banca Steinhauslin, guiding users through hundreds of investment opportunities and giving clients precise investment advice on a daily basis. Select online financial services firms are now putting Brainpower’s professional-level tools into the hands of their customers. These are the same customers who burned their fingers in the past two years by investing in so-called hot stocks recommended by friends and brokers, or promoted in tip-sheets. They have become reluctant to invest and this is reflected in weak online trading trends. The only way to encourage them to trade again is to rebuild their confidence by giving them the power to make smarter investment decisions. When Self Trade, a part of DAB Bank, the largest e-broking group in Europe, wanted to offer a greater range of services to private investors, it turned to Brainpower. Self Trade’s site includes comprehensive wealth management facilities for the novice to seasoned online investor. These facilities help investors to pick shares and offer alternative investment choices based on investment themes and personal investment styles. The analysis tools mean that investors can do all their homework on the stock and can feel comfortable before buying. They can also validate a stock selection against analysts’ estimates, benchmarks or sector performance. The online assistance, which is part of Brainpower’s solution, explains investment terms and how each piece of information should be interpreted depending on investment style. Well-informed investors make better investment decisions, are more likely to meet their investment objectives and are therefore likely to trade more frequently. Once an equity has been selected, investors can either make a trade or place the share on their watch list, which allows them to monitor performance and adjust strategies over a period of time before making the decision to buy.

The technology Not only do investment managers have to show superior returns but IT managers must now be able to show their chief investment officer or chief financial officer, in hard numbers, what kind of cost savings or return they can expect on their IT investment. Brainpower’s technology platform, NetXceed, is offered as a complete data management system to top-tier financial institutions. Analytic tools – such as Finest for equities, Top Funds for mutual funds and Compete for the marketing of mutual funds, as well as third-party CRM, order processing, accounting and back office systems – can be integrated into the platform without costly integration requirements or middleware systems. NetXceed is the ideal platform for open and distributed content-based applications. Optimally, it can provide content to any modern application. Open and fully scalable, the NetXceed platform can support individual desktop applications, high traffic retail web applications, wealth management advisory applications and even company-wide content and computation-intensive Intranet applications. The use of revolutionary technology like NetXceed avoids large investments in application evolution and other platform investments. For further information, please contact Brainpower in London on (+44) 020 7392 7100 or Switzerland on (+41) 091 985 7070. Alternatively e-mail: privatebanking@brainpowerweb.com or visit www.brainpowerweb.com