• Patricia Regnault Fouqueray, Director of Client Management at Linedata


• 25.12.2015 09:15 am
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The asset management industry is experiencing high competition, increased regulatory control and growing demand for information transparency amid the tide of global instability. The mission to succeed for asset managers and their service providers seems near impossible in these tough circumstances. Nevertheless the  industry is predicted to rise in value to more than $100 trillion by 2020. Linedata, a global fintech provider, is contributing towards making this growth happen. Being one of the pioneers in Software as a Service (SaaS), Linedata helps asset managers around the world to break through barriers of speed and geography in a rapidly evolving regulatory environment.     

Linedata started to apply a services oriented approach in 2000, before the actual concept of SaaS and cloud computing had even been coined. Somewhat surprisingly, it took some time for asset managers to realize the convenience of the SaaS model and at the beginning most managers were reluctant and cautious to accept these new technologies. Patricia Regnault Fouqueray, Director of Client Management at Linedata, shares the company’s SaaS story with Financial IT:    

“All of our solutions are SaaS compatible. Looking back over the history of Linedata, we were one of the first to provide services-driven solutions. This services approach is at the core of our vision as a company.

“We currently have 150 clients globally who use Linedata from a SaaS point of view. We’ve been using this approach for a long time, even if it hasn’t always been labelled as SaaS, as is the case with our SaaS platform Linedata Longview. After moving this platform onto the cloud we started to roll out the Longview SaaS platform to all of our clients. Surprisingly, most of our clients in the US were reluctant. We expected mostly small or mid-sized asset managers to join the platform, but in reality it was the large asset managers who were first to sign-up. They were convinced by Linedata’s services approach.”      

To cope with the rigors of compliance and reporting asset managers must stay up to date with the latest regulatory changes. With many asset managers now operating at a global level, it is becoming increasingly challenging for them to keep pace with new regulations and to apply the rules not only to specific jurisdictions but also at a global level. Linedata’s solutions address this problem by offering a consolidated platform as well as standalone solutions for managing all compliance activities for clients. 

“In each software solution the user can find a compliance piece and, more importantly, a regulatory reporting piece. This is the case for all solutions we provide to investment managers. We also have a platform which is dedicated to regulation, Linedata Compliance, which can either be deployed or used via the SaaS model. Clients can flawlessly manage the entire regulatory landscape at the global or local level.

“The challenge on one hand is understanding the rules at a global level.  Most of the time this can be achieved with the help of a legal partner. But on the other hand, you also need to make sure each regulation is applied correctly. This is where having some user-friendly software can really help the compliance officer to put all the updates in one place. Clients operating at the global level can face up to 50 changes a day and that’s a really huge challenge. You need to have a platform which both lets you know what’s going on and alerts you to potential breaches and also allows you to maintain and deploy new rules very easily. That’s what we provide.

“In each of Linedata’s solutions there is the capability to execute the basic requirements of regulatory reporting. In addition, if you want to have a consolidated platform to manage all of your compliance activities in one place, then there is the standalone solution in the form of Linedata Compliance. Within each solution there is a library of rules based on current, relevant regulations for individual countries so that you don’t have to start from scratch.”   

Software providers like Linedata give a competitive advantage to asset managers in their ability to make faster decisions and in building trustful relationships with their clients.   

“I think it’s one of the benefits in choosing to partner with a software provider instead of trying to go at it alone as a financial professional. It’s becoming more and more of a trend that financial professionals are outsourcing non-core functions to software providers like us. The software provider can segregate the rules. We can also keep all of the systems up to date in respect of regulations and associated functionality with the benefit of in-house expertise and economies of scale. For a financial professional it can be more of a challenge. As regulations continue to increase you need more people, resources and technology to manage that than ever before,” continues Patricia Regnault Fouqueray. 

The global success of Linedata’s solutions is grounded on three core values - great execution efficiency, user experience and customer satisfaction. Client centricity lies at the heart of the product development process for all Linedata solutions and services. By creating unique and customizable solutions Linedata helps its clients to differentiate themselves on the competitive market.  

“Client centricity means a combination of different things for Linedata. Three years ago we launched a major enterprise program to measure our client satisfaction. We devised an NPS methodology with a scale from one to 10 and questions like “Would you recommend this solution to one of your colleagues?”. This way, we can approach every single enterprise with a concrete action plan to increase the satisfaction of our clients. This can be from either a support or quality perspective. Within three years of the program’s inception we have seen a significant shift, measuring an increase in client satisfaction of 15 points.” 

Patricia illustrates how Linedata’s technology is linked to a client-centric approach through the example of reporting functionality:

“Let’s take reporting as an example. When our client, say an asset manager, wants to access our software via the web or smartphone he wants it to be a customized experience with a dashboard, showing the things he cares about most. This is what we deliver and what we call a client centric approach; where clients are put at the heart of what we are trying to achieve. In addition to the support we provide over the phone we also have people locally to interact with our clients. That’s why we have over 15 offices. We also created a customizable web portal called My Linedata where our clients can follow all the activities related to their software. It’s a little bit like Amazon. In My Linedata you can track all the updates on the use of your software, as well as finding information about planned versions, additional functionality and other key topics.

“This approach is where we are really seeing a demand in the market. In the aftermath of the financial crisis and the increasing competition that our clients face, everyone is looking to differentiate and an obvious and unique way to differentiate yourself is by taking even better care of your clients.  This is true for asset managers and fund administrators who are trying to improve the level of client satisfaction by providing a wider range of services and also by being more flexible.

“Our role at Linedata is to bring flexibility to our software and services so that our clients can differentiate themselves. If you take Linedata Longview, our front office platform, it’s made up of various components that we can put together, delivering connectivity to a variety of partners. This means that each asset manager will be able to engage with partners to create a connectivity platform. This mutual interconnectedness and the ability to customize their own approach and their own platform – bringing together different partners, components, options etc. – means that clients can create something which is really unique.”

The article is prepared by Financial IT team together with Four Broadgate.