Vidrio Blog

Appropriately, we kicked off our new virtual Coffee and a Conversation series with a discussion about remote due diligence meetings, aka Zoom Diligence, and presented ideas for allocators who must now adapt their processes to harness the opportunities of a virtual environment. Here we summarize the key points from the conversation, including audience poll results and recorded snippets from the presentation. 

It has been more than 35 years since Microsoft Excel (originally for the Macintosh!) was first introduced to the world. Yet here we are in 2020 and there are firms across the globe that still use Excel to support at least some crucial elements of their workflows, in spite of the known risk for errors or incomplete data. By this point I would expect more firms to be forward-thinking and farther along in planning for the future, yet even after more than two decades of selling sophisticated investment management software to financial institutions, I still find myself “competing” with some version of a makeshift solution created in Excel.

“Workflow” has become an in-vogue term in recent years, generally defined as the sequence of repeatable processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. For fund allocators, workflows are employed throughout the investment process, but are most prevalent in manager due diligence, ongoing investment monitoring, and in the fund subscription/redemption process. In today's “new normal” environment, where teams are working remotely and finding creative alternatives to conducting due diligence in person, workflows are more essential than ever, but are also at risk for disruption in the face of the current pandemic and future unknowns.

Vidrio's CEO, Mazen Jabben joined a virtual panel of fellow industry leaders for the October 9^th Talking Hedge Webinar: Managing Risk and Improving Alpha with Customization. The panel was part of the Talking Hedge Santa Monica event series, Customization is Key: Delivering Bespoke Solutions to Institutional Investors. In this post, Mazen summarizes key takeaways from the discussion and his own observations of how Vidrio’s clients are responding to the various trends discussed during the panel.

Nearly three months ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) announced the Proposed Rule on Reporting Threshold for Institutional Investment Managers, which proposes an amendment to raise the threshold for reporting specified equity securities on Form 13F from $100 million to $3.5 billion. In this post, we speak to Gygmy Gonnot, Head of Research at Vidrio, about the benefits and shortcomings of 13F disclosures, and the potential impact of the amendment, should it be enacted.

In their recently published investor update, Alternative Assets, H2 2020, Preqin reported that investors are not giving up on alternative assets and many expect to increase commitments.

In this post, Antonio Simonini, Vidrio's head of Client Services and member of our senior management team reflects on the effects of the current pandemic on the industry, Vidrio's own preparation and response, and the ways in which organizations can assess agility and resiliency of systems for whatever the future may hold.

When it comes to business continuity and infrastructure readiness, what does your new normal look like today, and are you preparing for whatever tomorrow’s “normal” may be?

For firms that desire continuity across all their teams, the multi-function single-vendor solution is a reasonable choice for the benefit of reporting alone. This level of centralization helps prevent discrepancies in data, reduces the drag of transferring information and work between systems, and promotes collaboration and transparency. The system dashboard becomes the information source for clients, prospects, and team members, instead of the limited data capture. This way, if you need more information to answer a question, you can do it in real-time.

One of the most widely used solutions capable of catering to an array of individual specialties is a combined patchwork of disparate tools and services for each functional need. While this approach seemingly allows allocation firms to leverage each area of expertise, it can be a hindrance to collaboration, accuracy, timeliness, and efficiency. Additionally, the costs can be insurmountable to set up all the necessary integrations and maintain with a growing staff and escalating service fees.

While there are trillions of dollars in the finance world managed on spreadsheets, there are a select few who choose to take on the task of creating their own custom-built software solution for portfolio management. 

The reasons to do so are the same as any other solution. 

• Sophisticated investors want a clear view of performance and risk across asset classes. 
• Robust data and analytics powered by software allow asset allocators to make better investment decisions. 

Spreadsheet software such as Excel may be the de facto system for financial institution's portfolio management, but should they be? With increasing staff, volumes of data, assets, and client responsibilities, spreadsheets quickly decay. The alignment between tables of information precariously poised on formula integrations and manual updates.