BI-SAM, a leading provider of data management, performance, attribution, risk,  GIPS Composites and reporting solutions for the asset management industry, will be exhibiting at  Screen Stockholm 2012 on Tuesday 8th May, organised by Screen Markets  at Berns Salonger, Berzelii Park.
The exhibition will host many participants presenting their latest product and service offerings in different areas such as performance measurement, risk management, data integration, and real time markets information. It will also allow experts in the market to offer their perspectives on a range of relevant issues currently confronting the industry.

“We look forward to exhibiting and being part of this event as a sponsor. BI-SAM is already involved in the Scandinavian market as part of our EMEA strategy and attending this event will reinforce our position as a market reference for performance, attribution, risk, GIPS Composites and reporting solution. This event will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn more about market data and new risk challenges as well as network with their peers.” commented Bénédicte Godet, Global Marketing & Communication Manager at BI-SAM.

Initiated a few years ago, BI-SAM’s risk management strategy has featured the development of ex-post, reconciliation and ex-ante multi-factor risk functionality. With the acquisition of OpenSight, a risk engine developed by Alphedra, BI-SAM’s strategy enters its next stage with the integration of OpenSight onto the B-One platform.

Created in 2007, Alphedra offers a unique and innovative risk management solution based on a high performance Monte Carlo simulation engine, allowing comprehensive monitoring of risks, both in terms of scope and control frequency. The system evaluates probabilistic risk indicators (Value at Risk, Tail-VaR, contributions) on investment portfolios, including a wide range of multi-sector risk factors (e.g. market, credit, default, interest rate). Simulations can be operated for current market conditions, or using worst-case scenarios, thus providing firms with a clear and reliable view of their risks and the ability to define investment strategies accordingly.

Commenting on the acquisition, Alexandre Harkous, BI-SAM CEO, said: “Integrating OpenSight’s innovative technology will position B-One as the leader in the risk & performance management solutions market. At BI-SAM, we strongly believe that risk and performance should be managed through a unified approach. Therefore, we are delighted to offer the industry a unique solution that provides more flexibility in the integration of risk management with performance measurement and analysis. Alphedra’s CEO, Philippe Affannato, has joined our Product Management team, bringing his unique expertise in risk management and his 15 years’ experience in the asset management industry as a performance & risk projects manager.”

“I am very proud to be joining BI-SAM and for OpenSight to be integrated into B-One. BI-SAM’s global coverage is an excellent fit with Alphedra’s specialist solution. The combination of our products will considerably strengthen BI-SAM’s risk offer”, added Philippe Affanato.

BI-SAM, a leading provider of data management, analytics, GIPS and reporting solutions for the asset management industry, will be exhibiting at the DKF 2012 in Munich on Tuesday 27 March at Sofitel Munich Bayerpost, organised by Screen Markets.

The conference brings together business executives, solution providers and opinion leaders from the financial services industry. Talks and practitioner presentations will offer the opportunity to learn how professionals from the financial industry in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein are addressing current issues and which products are being offered by specialised vendors.

“Our participation in the DACH 2012 conference is an important part of our growth strategy in Europe and we believe this year’s thought-provoking programme will gather many industry leaders” commented Bénédicte Godet, Global Marketing & Communication Manager at BI-SAM.

A single EMEA client services and business development team has been formed, by merging its Paris and London teams, to provide a more client-centric service capability, particularly for its clients that have multiple operations across different countries.

Peter Ellis has been appointed Chief Operating Officer, EMEA, and will lead this team.

As well as consolidating on its recent success as the leading platform for performance, attribution and reporting to the global asset management community, BI-SAM will be announcing new products and additional regional coverage during the year.

In this context, Peter Ellis comments “The impressive development of BI-SAM these last years has shown the group’s capacity to take up new challenges, while continuing to enhance and consolidate B-One’s position as the best performance, attribution and reporting solution on the market. I am very proud to be leading this new organisational structure which will reinforce our presence and client services in the region”, commented Peter.

With more than 25 years of experience gained in insurance, engineering, software development, and investment management, Peter has excellent knowledge of performance measurement and analysis. Prior to joining BI-SAM, he was Managing Director of Investit since 2004. He has also spent 8 years at Deutsche Asset Management, where he held a number of roles in IT and in the business. In his last role at Deutsche Asset Management, he was Managing Director, Performance and Client Services. Peter has extensive project management experience on a wide range of projects, and has directed many complex strategic projects, both from within IT as a project manager and as a business sponsor.

Highlighting the importance of this new strategic plan and the appointment of Peter Ellis, Alexandre Harkous, BI-SAM CEO, said: “I am delighted Peter is joining BI-SAM after a distinguished career in asset management, client services and consulting. His experience dealing with complex performance measurement projects is highly relevant to a global solution provider such as BI-SAM. I strongly believe that the new EMEA structure, amongst our other strategic projects in 2012, will support our growth and continue to improve our clients’ satisfaction.”

The 5^th Annual Performance Measurement conference organised by the Financial Technology Forum will take place on March 21^st in New York at the Bayards on Hanover Square. BI-SAM,  a leading provider of data management, analytics, GIPS and reporting solutions for the asset management industry, will be exhibiting at the conference and  taking part in the Risk panel discussion.

The conference brings together Performance Measurement professionals, Directors of Operations, CTOs and any financial services professional looking to learn more about performance measurement and attribution. Topics discussed during this one-day event include: Outsourcing and performance measurement, regulation and performance reporting, multi-asset class performance, data management, standards update and risk & performance.

Christophe Volard, BI-SAM Inc.’s COO, will take part in the Risk and Performance panel discussion and will share BI-SAM’s view and expertise on the tight link between performance and risk. BI-SAM recently won the BST “Best Risk Initiative” award 2011 for the implementation of a new ex-ante and ex-post risk reconciliation methodology.

“The 5^th edition of the Annual Performance Measurement conference is focusing on new regulations and industry standards as well as the growing importance of performance measurement & risk in the asset management industry. We believe our participation in the conference is in line with our strong position in the market and our commitment to the middle office professionals” commented Bénédicte Godet, Global Marketing & Manager at BI-SAM.

This summit, organised by Terrapinn, brings together regional and global institutional investors, asset managers, private wealth managers and asset servicers to explore the latest portfolio management strategies. The conference showcases top asset classes, untapped regional opportunities and global funds, enabling investors and asset managers to produce maximum returns in 2012.

This is the best place in the region to meet and network with family offices and sovereign wealth funds searching for global investment opportunities.

This year’s conference will take place in Dubai from the 5^th to the 7^th of March, with a pre-conference summit on the 5^th dedicated to Islamic Finance followed by a two-day conference chaired by Mr Jacques Bernard, Chief Investment Officer at the National Bonds Corporation in UAE (United Arab Emirates).

“We are very pleased to be part of the biggest event for the asset management industry in the Middle East” commented Bénédicte Godet, Global Marketing & Communication Manager at BI-SAM, “This step in the region is part of our EMEA strategy and we have already been approached by some asset managers requiring best-in-class analytics & reporting solutions.”

Scott’s appointment will reinforce BI-SAM’s North American management team, which has already been strengthened through a heavy recruitment drive. Growing from 5 to 15 employees, the US subsidiary has benefited from a large success in the market, and has seen client numbers doubled.

Current market requirements combined with the impressive reputation of B-One & BI-SAM’s team of experts are the group’s main success factors in the region.

With more than 15 years’ experience in financial platforms implementation management, Scott worked for Wall Street Systems for over 10 years managing the implementation teams and projects. He holds Masters in both Finance and Information Systems Management.

He will work closely with Christophe Volard, BI-SAM Inc. COO, and Steve Shefras, Business Development Director.

“Scott’s expertise in financial software’s implementation and team management is a real asset for our growing professional services teams”, commented Christophe, “our success in the region is very exciting and reinforcing our teams as well as the management is crucial for our organisation.”

“I am very pleased to be joining BI-SAM, especially at this very exciting time of development”, added Scott, “B-One is a very good fit to the US market requirements and I look forward to helping our clients optimise their operations and improve their performance measurement and reporting capabilities”.

BI-SAM today announced the release of B-One 3.4, the latest version of its award-winning platform.

B-One 3.4 has been heavily developed in partnership with BI-SAM’s clients. One example is the new Ex-Ante multifactor risk  model for fixed income which has been implemented with a major industry player to reinforce and extend the current ex-ante risk capabilities in order to provide more accurate information to investors.

BI-SAM’s team of experts has strengthened the GIPS module workflow integration, enabling the internal processes to meet the GIPS requirements.

A ‘lock-date’ feature has been added to prevent published results being overwritten or modified and a new advanced screen allows you to manage GIPS portfolio approval dates, to ensure results can only be published after a defined approval process.

Additionally, new workflow features allow Heads of Reporting to analyse delays, and identify the production value chain weaknesses. They significantly enhance the reporting production follow-up by providing an overall view of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

 “We believe that this latest version of B-One will provide our clients considerable productivity and efficiency gains The new functionalities developed in partnership with major industry players such as the new Ex-Ante multifactor risk model, allow B-One to meet new market needs and provide unique calculation models. We have already started developing the next version of B-One, which will continue to include new functionality to improve and heighten the user experience.” Frederic Lalande, Deputy  Managing Director, Product Strategy at BI-SAM.

BI-SAM’s B-One platform is a complex product. Not only is its performance and attribution functionality second to none, but its risk initiative is the best around this year, as evidenced by its dual win in the Buy-Side Technology Awards 2011. Developed in conjunction with a group of French asset managers, particularly Covéa Finance, it brings the ability to break down ex-ante and ex-post risk on a granular scale. David Cayet, business analyst at BI-SAM, tells Waters what sets B-One’s risk modules apart from the crowd.

Can you tell us about the risk-related elements of B-One?
Basically, we have three parts of B-One that cover the risk area. The first one is the ex-ante risk decomposition module. This module allows the calculation of the absolute and the relative risk through a significant range of financial indicators. In addition to this, we also offer the ability to manage risk via the what-if module. This module helps a fund manager to assess the impact of potential decisions on the forecasted risk. That’s the first part of our offering. Then, we have an ex-post risk attribution model. This module focuses on the actual risk, the objective is twofold. The first is to provide a decomposition of the main risk indicators such as volatility, tracking error and some risk-adjusted performance indicators. The second objective is to provide tracking error attribution, so we highlight the portion of relative risk that can be attributed to management decisions. In fact, from this module and from the equity attribution, we can depict the whole picture of the portfolio in terms of return and risk, therefore we can tell the true story of the portfolio. The last part we have is the ex-ante and ex-post risk reconciliation. The objective of this module is to perform ex-ante and ex-post attribution, and then explain where the differences come from. That’s our current offer, to cover risk.

And this last module was developed in conjunction with Covéa Finance?
Exactly. The ex-ante and ex-post risk reconciliation module has been developed in partnership with Covéa Finance.

Why did you bring them on board?
This model, what we call the AMPERE [Asset Management, Performance and Reporting] model in French, has been developed by a group of French asset managers, the club AMPERE. In the group we have Amundi, Covéa Finance, BNP, State Street, AXA Investment Management, Société Générale Gestion, among others. Covéa Finance was really active in this group and confident in this model, and they wanted to be the first to propose this solution to their investors, because they have some strong requirements from their own clients. We also had a strong desire to propose this analysis, which is the one reason why we decided to work in a strong partnership with Covéa Finance to develop the module.

What sort of timeframe are we talking about for its development?
We split the project in three phases. A first phase where we have transposed the theory into practical through several examples. This phase has been useful to validate the model and highlight some deficiencies. We worked with Covea Finance’s teams to find acceptable solutions and bring robustness to this model. Once we reached a complete agreement on the model, we made the development. Finally, during the third phase, we made the tests with Covéa Finance. All of these three phases took about nine months.

So what is it that makes the model stand out?
The industry proposes either the ex-ante risk analysis or the ex-post risk analysis, but there is no solution that attempts to explain where the difference between the expected risk and the actual risk comes from. That is the originality of the approach. By using this model, we can explain where the difference comes from via two effects: an environment effect and a management decision effect.

BI-SAM Technologies has continued to impress with its B-One software this year. Chief among its functionality is its performance attribution and reporting functionality, which cinched it the gong at this year’s Buy-Side Technology Awards in London. Ian Thompson, director, tells Waters about this year and the company’s plans for the future.

What are the big enhancements you’ve made to B-One this year?
This year, as always, we have two releases, one minor and one major, for the product.

Is that a set schedule, two per year?
Yeah, two major product upgrades per year. What we’ve done this year is focus on our core areas of performance, risk and reporting. We’ve made some significant enhancements to the workflow module with the ability to incorporate deadlines, to assign tasks to users, and improvements in the way that monitoring takes place. We’ve made some enhancements in fixed income attribution, we’ve also incorporated some of the Key Investor Information Document (KIID) requirements for UCITS IV related to the calculation and monitoring of Synthetic Risk and Reward Indicator (SRRI). Also, we’ve further enhanced our Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) module during the year, and for the US market particularly, we’ve included after-tax returns and back-end fees. We’ve developed a new risk and attribution reconciliation module, which won one of the BST awards, and we’re in the process of developing a fixed income, multi-factor risk model. That’s just this year.

And what do you have in the pipeline for next year?
Next year, again, we have further attribution enhancements. What we do, and one of the reasons that we’ve been successful in these awards and with new business, is to significantly invest in the product. Even in areas where we have quite extensive functionality, we’ve continued to enhance it. So with attribution, we have various enhancements such as multi-level look-through analysis in the next release. We’re looking at enhancements to the risk modules including further multi-factor models. We’re looking at the distribution of information from the performance and risk analysis from B-One, with the ability to present that via a web portal. Within our total returns module, the ability to aggregate portfolios to multiple levels in the firm.

Are you enhancing automation across the entire product?
We’ve spent a lot of time over the last year in doing that; it’s why a lot of the workflow enhancements have been geared towards further automating processes for providing analysis. We’ll continue to do that, but I think a major focus for next year will be the distribution of analytics in a wider sense throughout an organization. So not just to performance and risk teams, but to the front office, to the clients, and more to senior management.

To ensure that everyone receives the same data?
Exactly, that’s one of the key points really, having one consistent source of performance and risk analytics within the firm, so you don’t have multiple systems. A lot of our clients are using B-One to replace a number of different systems, so there’s one consistent source of analysis.

You’ve had a number of high-profile partnerships recently at BI-SAM, such as with Capco. Have they been beneficial to the company?
Yes. We have different types of partnership arrangements; we have implementation partners, we have data partners, integration and technical partners. From the point of view of implementation, firms like Capco allow us to provide additional capacity for our implementations, so as we grow our business it gives us more flexibility to be able to implement the system, to be able to scale up more quickly. That’s been particularly useful in the US so far – we have a lot of prospects and implementations starting up there, it’s allowed us to support that effectively. We’ve been able to certify consultants from firms like Capco to ensure that they’re up to speed, that they’re up to the right standard, that they understand the product, they’re capable and understand the business. That’s quite useful, as it gives us more flexibility on resourcing. Then, on the data side, for people like RIMES it’s a different sort of relationship. Our clients always need data, and it works well when you have companies that are used to working together – it makes the whole process much easier. For the future, to make sure that we’re able to stay ahead technologically in making improvements to the product, we’re utilizing some partnerships with companies such as Oracle, where we’re able to make sure that we can scale up as effectively as possible.