FWD Group Deploys Bloomberg Buy-Side Solutions

Hong Kong-based FWD Group, the insurance arm of investment group Pacific Century Group is implementing Bloomberg’s full suite of buy-side risk management solutions. 

This includes Bloomberg’s asset and investment manager system (AIM), its portfolio and risk analytics solution (PORT), as well as its multi-asset risk system (MARS), and its latest IFRS 9 platform. 

Paul Carrett, CIO at FWD Group, says this allows FWD to analyze, model and monitor investment performance while keeping investment risks across the region in sight, as well as having the necessary workflows to comply with the latest global regulatory standards. 

He says there are two things that remain a challenge to buy-side firms—people and core infrastructure. “The people side, we are constantly working on, but the technology side is key to that—to enable people to do their jobs properly,” he says. 

He tells WatersTechnology that, although it might sound like an obvious point to make, that the idea is to ensure its front-office division is focused on front-office tasks. “It may sound straightforward but if the systems are poor or have gaps, your people could be spending too much time fixing problems or doing manual work. It can sound very simple but it’s a challenge,” he adds. 

One of FWD’s aims is to ensure its performance reporting is done cleanly, efficiently, and consistently across all its businesses. If a firm has its core infrastructure working well, it leaves room for those on the front-office desks to focus on more value-additional tasks, Carrett says. 

“You can’t really build systems to do very sophisticated risks analysis unless you have that core platform unified across your business in the first place,” he adds.

This becomes more difficult when firms have to deal with multiple regulatory requirements, particularly when it comes to accounting systems, which may not be well supported in certain countries. 

Carrett adds that one of the challenges in the industry is insurance companies tend to operate as subsidiaries, as opposed to branches within the banking industry. “Banks tend to operate as branches and they have similar systems across all countries. Although there are exceptions, they tend to have reasonably strong core systems. If you’re an insurance company, by virtue of various acquisitions, or different requirements in different countries, it’s easy to end up with different systems,” he says. 

Also, some of the assets owned in certain markets may be different. Carrett says, “If you are operating on a pan-Asian basis, in different markets there are just different types of securities possibly for regulatory reasons, that are attractive, or due to the nature of the underlying investment market that some of those assets are attractive in one market and not another. You should be able to accommodate that asset across different countries, using a common system.”