Alignment Systems
Software and consultancy services for asset managers and hedge funds
The Alignment Engine
The Alignment Engine is a front office product that covers the full spectrum of instrument types, the full range of portfolio management styles, offers real time pricing and data integration, a fully featured compliance server, FIX 4.4 single, block and basket order generation and yet does all this within an easy to use, intuitive user application. One thing it isn't is a trade and order management system - but we will build links into in-house or vendor TOM packages for ease of use and integration.
Can your front office systems...
...genuinely handle equity, fixed income, mortgage backed, TIPs, ETFs, OEICs, futures, options, foreign exchange and more?
...tell you if you are breaching or about to breach client, house or portfolio compliance restrictions?
...link up with your multiple back office systems to provide the front office with a single point of reference?
See Multiple Back Office Consolidation
...provide graphical representations of holdings, models, sector weights and deviations?
See Graphing
...provide "look-through" of collective investments as well as derivative exposure?
See Look Through
...link up with risk management applications to show VaR and other risk analytics?
See Index
...link up with market standard data vendors to provide genuine real time prices or snapshot price captures?
...handle an unlimited number of security classification schemes comprising an unlimited number of hierarchical levels of classification?
...calculate real time profit and loss?
See Real Time PnL
...dynamically reclassify fixed income instruments?
...offer genuinely integrated portfolio rebalancing and compliance?
See Integrated Compliance and Rebalancing
...integrate with your performance measurement system to show portfolio holdings and their performance?
See Integration with Performance Measurement
...link through to your CRM?
...link up with your document management system ?
See Document Management?
...link into your existing front office spreadsheets?
...communicate via FIX to your brokers?
See FIX Integration
...provide "off-the-shelf" integration with value added data providers?
See Data Providers
...be supported easily by your personnel?
See Support
The Alignment System has been designed from the ground up to be user friendly, functionally powerful, able to interface to multiple data sources with an "open" structure allowing for extensive customisation and modification.
| Subject | Detail |
| Document Management | The Alignment Engine offers document management capability or integration with your document management system. This allows the front office user to 'hook-into' document management and see copies of client agreements, contract notes etc. |
| Multiple Back Office Consolidation | Due to the meta-data layer The Alignment Engine is able to manage interfaces to multiple back offices and provide a unified view of the business to the front office. |
| Real Time Data Feeds | All information to connect to multiple real time data providers is stored within the database |
| Integrated Compliance and Rebalancing |
The Alignment Engine provides a complete, integrated approach to compliance and rebalancing. These two traditionally separate disciplines are combined in the front office to reduce errors, compliance breaches and improve conformance to mandate. |
| Instrument Classification | Instrument classification has the utmost level of flexibility. Any number of classifications can be stored and maintained within the system. As a rule, if the data is available, then it can be "sliced-and-diced" in any way. |
| Dynamic Reclassification | Fixed Income instruments can be dynamically reclassified into the correct exposure bucket for duration or maturity based modelling. |
| Integration with Performance Measurement | The Alignment Engine Open API allows the system to link through to your performance measurement system. This allows the Investment Manager to see holdings and performance in one place. |
| Client Information | The extensive client data model means that client relationship data can be integrated from your CRM system, or The Alignment Engine can operate as a simple CRM system. |
| Spreadsheet Integration | The open, extensible nature of The Alignment Engine means that you existing front office spreadsheets can be linked into the system to provide a way to protect legavy IT investment. |
| FIX Integration | Thanks to the participation of Alignment Systems in several FIX projects as well as out commitment to the FIX user community through the www.fixprotocol.org website we have developed the APIs to link into your existing FIX infrastructure. Alternatively we can participate in a vendor search and selection for a FIX engine. |
| Data Providers | While Alignment Systems are not data providers we have experience of integrating to a number of data providers. We are always willing to invest in new interfaces to data providers where we see mutual benefits. |
| Real Time PnL | The Alignment Engine can, when interfaced to a suitable data feed, calculate real time profit and loss at the strategy and total fund level. |
| Look Through | The Alignment Engine can "look-through" a holding in a collective investment to see the underlying assets held inside the collective. See also Look-Through |
| Graphing | A powerful server side graph generation tool creates high impact graphs to represent stock and sector level summary information including model comparison and deviation from model. |
| Compliance Module | The Alignment Engine Compliance Module provides a foundation stone of the Investment Management front office toolkit. The simple to implement yet powerful and extensible product offers a great deal to the front office and reduces the likelihood of mistakes happening. |
| Support | The Alignment Engine includes a powerful set of support methods that make application support easier - including an easy to use application log fiel shipping function. |
| Cross Product Capability | The inherently flexible datamodel includes all fields needed for: Equities, Fixed Income including mortgage backed and inflation linked, collective investments, foreign exchange |
| Value At Risk | The |
Functional Matrix
| Function | Usage |
| Index Tracking Funds | Rebalance an index tracking fund to the underlying index weights. This is fully integrated with compliance checking. |
| "What - If" | See the effect on the portfolio of proposed trades. |
| Integrated Compliance | After running a "What-If" scenario or rebalancing exercise, run the proposed trades through compliance and see whether they are valid. |
| Open Compliance | All data items in the database are available to the compliance engine. The compliance engine is therefore able to run any type of analysis on the proposed orders. Within the extensible framework it is possible to integrate any data such as real time prices during compliance checking |
| Portfolio Consolidation | Pick which portfolios to consolidate and have the system display the results as though there is only one portfolio. |
| Exposure Bucket Consolidation | Similar instruments can be treated as a "bucket" to allow rapid examination of the high level information about a portfolio, rather than getting stuck down in the details. |
| Duration / Maturity Bucket vs Index Comparison | Fixed Income functionality is built into MSRS from the ground up. This is not an equity system with extra fields added. |
| Back Office Consolidation | Load in data from disparate back offices to see overall positions |
| Document Management | Provides document management capability and can integrate with an existing document management system. |
Technical Detail
| Technology |
| Microsoft SQL Server 2000 |
| Microsoft Visual Basic 6 |
| Microsoft Visual Basic.NET |
| JavaScript |
| Crystal Reports |
Functionality Checklist
| Question | Yes/No |
| Does the application interface to real time data providers such as Bloomberg, Telerate and Reuters? | YES |
| Does the application store all index data in the database with an audit trail? | YES |
| Does the application have a security model to ensure that users can only see data they have permission for? | YES |
| Does the application have built in web-access for remote users? | YES |
| Can the application handle an unlimited number of instrument classification schemes? | YES |
| Can each classification scheme have an unlimited degree of hierarchical levels? | YES |
| Does the application store historical data? | YES |
Version Specific Information
| Version | Supported? |
| 1.0 | NO |
| 1.1 | NO |
| 1.2 | NO |
| 1.3 | NO(*) |
| 1.4 | YES |
| 1.5 | YES |
Contacting Alignment Systems
To get in touch or ask for a demonstration mail us at enquire@alignment-systems.com