Charles River Development, the portfolio management system acquired last year by State Street Corp., will soon provide clients with access to a greater range of risk analytics in a bid at becoming the industry’s premier portfolio management platform.
The front- and middle-office investment platform has formed a strategic partnership with portfolio and risk management services provider Axioma, State Street announced Thursday. The partnership will provide Charles River clients with access to Axioma’s risk and portfolio analytics, including factor models and portfolio optimization capabilities.
It’s the latest effort to build what State Street and Charles River have branded as the industry’s “first-ever global, front-to-back, client servicing platform from a single provider.” The joining of the two firms in October was viewed by industry observers as an attempt to compete with BlackRock’s widely used Aladdin platform, which has been one of Charles River’s biggest rivals.
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In Thursday’s announcement, Charles River chief executive officer John Plansky said that the firm’s acquisition by State Street was driven by the intent to build a “front-to-back investment management and servicing platform that could support the deep enterprise data aggregation and management, analytics, and compliance needs of our clients.” He added that the new partnership with Axioma was a “testament to the depth and scalability of State Street’s front-to-back platform offering.”
The partnership will combine Charles River’s portfolio management, risk, and attribution capabilities with Axioma’s equity, multi-asset, and fixed-income factor models, which will be offered directly within the Charles River Investment Management Solution platform.
“Our global clients will be able to seamlessly integrate and leverage their portfolio management and risk analytics needs all from a single, interoperable solution,” Plansky said.
Charles River clients, including institutional investors and wealth managers, currently manage more than $25 trillion on the company’s platform. Axioma serves asset managers, hedge funds, insurers, pensions, wealth managers, and investment banks with over $10 trillion under management.
