Covid-19 has caused businesses of all types to look at their disaster preparedness and business continuity planning. For fund allocators, the market downturn caused by coronavirus fears brought the importance of high-quality integrated systems into sharp focus. Here are a few issues we are seeing our clients facing and how Vidrio is helping:
In a market sell-off, many portfolio managers are acutely concerned about the impact on their holdings. The core job of a portfolio management system is to help answer three critical questions:
A holistic operating system like Vidrio focuses on providing information to answer these questions by
Vidrio provides insights into all of these questions – looking at the real-time options for a manager through portfolio simulation tools to look at prospective changes and by modeling manager redemption terms at the series and share class to analyze liquidity options.
As PMs and Analysts parse the portfolio and manager profiles to assess exposure to regions and sectors most impacted by the coronavirus, the ability to provide holdings-based exposure and risk detail becomes very valuable. Holdings based exposure allows for deeper slicing and dicing of manager exposure to pinpoint areas of both concern and potential profit. Risk analysis at the holdings level will also allow for better assessment of which managers may be in peril, and which are offering support through risk mitigating strategies and holdings.
Allocators are facing information pressure on both sides of their portfolio. On one hand, they need to reach out to their fund partners for updates and to record the information they gain from these updates. On the other hand, they have to respond to their investors and key stakeholders who are similarly checking in for updates.
A holistic Technology Enabled Service like Vidrio provides a range of helpful services in pressure situations like this:
For manager interactions:
For client interactions:
All these features and more allow you to respond more quickly and thoroughly to market events. Putting your clients at ease by giving them the information and insights you’ve gathered rather than the dreaded “I’ll get back to you” or worse, no response at all.
Globally, many offices have already shut down, and Business Continuity Plans are going into effect. When your staff works remotely, having a cloud-based SaaS enables your team to access the system anywhere. It also helps that all staff are working off the same data pool and in the same front, middle, and back-office tool. We are prepared on our end too, with a full BCP/DR plan that enables Vidrio’s systems to function seamlessly even as our staff works remotely across the globe.
This is not the time to email spreadsheets back and forth.
During times of turmoil, information must disseminate quickly and uniformly. The updates coming from external managers are critical to keeping everyone on the same message to all clients. Single DB tools like Vidrio empower remote workers a unified and timely data source.
For hedge fund allocators, there are some early indications that many managers are proving their merit by protecting against the market turmoil and even finding ways to profit from the upheaval.
Vidrio clients have a lot on their minds these days, but systems shortcomings are not on that list right now. By providing services designed to support their businesses in times of stress, and systems that give the information you need when you need it no matter where you are working from, Vidrio is helping our clients stay business healthy and prepared for further market turmoil.