Situation

Schroders used a mixture of in-house applications and third party software packages to undertake performance measurement and attribution. Although there was some degree of automation available from systems, considerable manual intervention was required from performance analysts in order to compensate for shortfalls, particularly for client reporting.

In London, this situation resulted in a process that was resource-intensive, not scalable, too slow to deliver data, and carried considerable risk of error due to manual intervention and lack of automated checking. In addition, functionality to support attribution, especially for fixed income portfolios, was lacking.
The key objectives of this project were to improve the core monthly reporting process through automation of workflow wherever possible and to provide the potential to enhance depth, coverage and delivery of analysis, thus allowing the performance team to respond quickly to changes in business requirements.
Leonie Woodward, Head of Performance Measurement at Schroders said: "We needed a system that would improve the workflow and autonomy of the teams, enabling them to add value to the business rather than fulfilling menial data-related tasks".

Expected outcomes

Selecting BI-SAM allowed Schroders to implement a single system to support their performance measurement, and attribution, including fixed income, reporting processes on a global basis.
"Our decision to select BI-SAM was based on the ability of their innovative system to meet all of our business requirements and on the quality of their teams".
Overall, the quality and accuracy of the output of the team has been improved by implementing a solution that results in a reduction in the amount of manual work required by performance analysts, and by the introduction of automated validation and quality checks for fund, benchmark and relative returns. The work of these teams has also been rendered more interesting, by removing the "churn" from processes.

BI-SAM's Solution

The B-One BI-SAM Analytics Suite provides:
- Management of security, portfolio, index and benchmark data in the database.
- Total return calculations
- Equities/ Balanced Performance Attribution Effects calculations
- Fixed Income Attribution Effects calculations (2 methodologies available)
The BI-SAM Reporting Suite provides sophisticated templates that can be modified by the business users. The report creation tool allows Shröders to design and customize (content, graphical charting) performance reports and reports can be generated in multi-format (paper, PDF XML / XSL, HTML...), multi-language and multi-channel (hard copy, e-mail, file system).

"We believe that the BI-SAM Analytics Suite is the best available in the market to meet our requirements".

Benefits and interests

All BI-SAM software suites are integrated and modular so that clients can select the modules they require. Based on a robust open multi-tier J2EE architecture, BI-SAM solutions are easily implemented into existing technical architectures and information systems of Schröders, as well as being scalable and able to support high volumes in a secure manner.

The implementation of BI-SAM Solution as a global platform (London, Luxembourg, Asia an New York) will improve the competitiveness of Schröders Investement Management on global scale enabling us to report and analyse source of performance for all our products.

Implementation

The implementation, carried out by a mixed BI-SAM/ Schroders team, entailed a stepped approach, starting with the Go Live of the equities portfolios in just 9 months. The second phase was the fixed income portfolios. In parallel, the project was rolled out to the offices in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia) and then finally the New York office (mid-2007).

Conclusion

The success of this project was largely owing to the close working relationship between Schroders and BI-SAM, assuring complete transparency and clear line of communication. Owing to the flexibility and scalability of the B-One platform, this is now the global performance and attribution reporting platform at Schroders.