Fundamental Software has recently completed development on Version 3 of its Portfolio Manager, which has benefited from a complete technology rewrite. The Fundamental Portfolio Manager (or FPM) allows asset managers to focus on their core competencies, with administration support being provided by FPM throughout the asset management lifecycle. Allan Gray, the largest privately owned investment management company in South Africa, has recently moved into production onto the upgraded asset management administration platform. “Allan Gray’s previous solution had become dated from a technology perspective,” Edgar Loxton, Operations Director of Allan Gray says. “In addition to having to employ software developers to maintain and extend the system, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable skills as the programming language was outdated.”
Allan Gray selected Fundamental for a number of reasons, but primarily due to their local presence and the fact that they could provide a relevant solution on a modern development platform. After being appointed in 2006, it became apparent that Fundamental and Allan Gray would need to work closely together to redevelop Fundamental’s existing product into a solution that would have maximum benefit: not only for Allan Gray but for the broader global investment management community.
“This was much more than a straight-forward implementation; we have essentially rewritten the application over the past three years,” says Craig Arenhold, CEO of Fundamental. “One of our biggest challenges was to shape FPM into a product that was suited to Allan Gray’s specific requirements, but that was still market-relevant. Given FPM’s successful rollout at other client sites we are confident that we have achieved that.”
Fundamental has spent three years rewriting its application into a pure Microsoft C# .Net framework. FPM is a front- to back-end asset management platform which covers the full spectrum of asset administration. The latest version includes an integrated general ledger, which ensures integrity of data from an accounting perspective.
“We wanted to go with a best-of-breed, modular approach that will enable us to handle potential changes to aspects of our system in future with minimum effort and impact,” says Loxton. “Our new architecture with FPM at its core, together with a number of other best-of-breed systems providing compliance, reporting, integration and attribution, is supporting our business exactly the way we wanted it to.”
