Investment management consultancy Investit has released a new integrated benchmarking tool to allow asset management firms to compare their processes with their peers and industry best practice.
“The industry has become far more competitive over the last two years with different players coming onto the market. It is more important than ever for firms to implement a best practice framework,” said Peter Ellis, managing director, Invesit, in a statement. “The challenge is how to do this in the current environment when the value of assets is being reduced and IT budgets are under pressure.”
The offering comprises four of Investit’s already-established services. The firm’s Operations Best Practice benchmark provides a dashboard to assess the robustness and sophistication of a firm’s operational processes. Based on Investit’s self-assessment questionnaire, developed as part of the January 2009 research report ‘Defining Operations Best Practice’, the analysis covers process descriptions, key value statements and guidelines for best practice that have been endorsed by members of Investit’s Intelligence service.
The second service – the IT Value service – collects key quantitative and qualitative data to assess the inner workings of a firm’s IT spend and allows clients to analyse and conduct peer comparisons of their organisation’s IT function.
Thirdly, the business process assessment measures quality and performance of investment management companies’ business processes. This will help fund managers clarify the value each individual business segment delivers to the company and to the client as well as pinpoints where its weak spots are.
Lastly, the Research and Execution Commission Analysis service helps investment managers measure research payments by shedding light on market rates for research, provides a basis of negotiation with providers and gives a clearer understanding of best execution.
“We have seen a great deal of interest from pension funds, for example, in our Operations Best Practice benchmark,” said Clare Vincent-Silk, principal, operations, Investit. “It gives them a better appreciation of what constitutes best practice in this area and helps them determine which of their fund managers are achieving the industry standard.”