http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/news.htm Investment accounting and portfolio management news items from QED Financial Systems us-en Copyright 2007, QED Financial Systems, Inc. kendus@qedfinancialsystems.com kendus@qedfinancialsystems.com http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/images/QED_FS19.png http://www.QEDFinancialSystems.com 222 73 Investment accounting and portfolio management news items from QED Financial Systems http://www.qedfs.com/qbriefing_trust.htm MARLTON, NJ — July 15, 2008 — To trust or not to trust? That is the big question which many firms responsible for investment accounting operations face today. I’m referring to the important issue of the dependability of custodial data. Can you rely on it? Should you rely on it? After all, it is, ultimately, your data and it is your organization – not the custodian’s – that will be impacted. ---- In this insightful briefing from QED Financial Systems, Matt Mille, a veteran of twenty-five years in the financial services software industry, describes current issues affecting the reliability of custodial data, the causes of these problems, and suggestions for protecting your organization’s critical interests. http://www.qedfs.com/qbriefing_DR.htm MARLTON, NJ — June 18, 2008 — The top four causes of IT downtime are failures of hardware, networks, power supplies, and applications. Most of the time, these man-made problems can be controlled or fixed quickly. But what about acts of nature – earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, fires, abnormal heat waves, and more – that have dominated recent headlines? These types of disasters can cause near-fatal system failures if you do not have an established and working plan for recovery. Your systems can be down for days, weeks, or even months at a time while you try to rebuild or, at worst, start over. With these thoughts in mind, it is of paramount importance that IT decision makers within financial enterprises consider integrated disaster recovery and data backup features when selecting a provider of middle- and back-office systems or services. ---- This informative briefing from QED Financial Systems explores ways your financial systems or services providers can be instrumental in ensuring your business continues to operate during times of emergency. http://www.qedfs.com/qbriefing_GL.htm MARLTON, NJ - April 15, 2008 - Businesses today are moving to consolidate and streamline processes and are therefore implementing single, advanced software solutions that combine comprehensive functionality previously found only in disparate systems. Among the processes that financial organizations are attempting to streamline are investment management, departmental accounting, and enterprise-wide treasury operations. Additionally, special emphasis is being placed on seamless general ledger integration with each process. ---- Read this intriguing article to learn how QED Financial Systems provides an integrated general ledger along with the investment accounting and treasury operations functions of Q2 to cater to the needs of financial organizations who want to minimize the ‘technology footprint’ in their organizations. Rather than researching, purchasing, maintaining and supporting the hardware, software, licenses, and services associated with multiple incongruous systems, treasurers, CFOs, IT directors, and other enterprise decision makers can solely rely on a single system like Q2 to meet their demands. http://www.qedfs.com/qbriefing_corporate_actions.htm MARLTON, NJ - March 12, 2008 - In a world in which STP is taken for granted in trade clearance and settlement, the corporate actions area remains one of the few in securities operations that is not fully automated. Efforts have increased recently, driven in part by the Basel II accord’s emphasis on operational risk.(1) Over the last three years, spending on corporate actions technology increased steadily from $121 million in 2004 to $285 million in 2007.(2) Even as automation efforts proceed, they are hampered by the lack of universal standards and by technology unable to cope with the more complex corporate action types, any one of which can generate multiple processing scenarios. The TowerGroup has speculated that despite the industry’s increased investment in automation, firms won’t turn their full attention to the effort until regulators raise the issue, which is “unlikely unless some watershed event were to occur, such as a sizable and public loss by a securities firm.”(3)Despite the difficulties involved with automating corporate actions processing, a select few solution providers are succeeding in changing the landscape once dominated by manual processing. This briefing from QED Financial Systems describes how the Q2 Investment Workflow System provides automated corporate action processing that enables investment organizations to move closer to achieving true STP. http://www.qedfs.com/qbriefing_thirteenth_month.htm MARLTON, NJ - February 8, 2008 - Well, it’s that time of year, when I, and others not enamored with ice fishing, wish January and February could just be eliminated from the calendar. With a single, broad brush stroke, let’s just move from the December holidays right into the promising winds of March. Sounds appealing, right? On the other hand, for those of us who have to deal with the dreaded year-end processing in investment portfolio accounting operations, a good case can be made for adding a thirteenth month to the year rather than subtracting months. With respectful empathy for my frozen brethren, I want to make you aware of how savvy asset managers have used some very clever securities processing system enhancements to provide, in effect, a thirteenth month -- a baker’s dozen of months, if you will -- to make challenging year-end processing a non-event. In this insightful briefing from QED Financial Systems, Matt Mille, a veteran of twenty-five years in the financial services software industry, describes a powerful investment accounting technique that many financial services firms will find helpful. http://www.qedfs.com/news/QEDLink.pdf MARLTON, NJ - January 15, 2008 - In January 2008, QED Financial Systems introduced QEDLink, a subscription-based service that enables investment advisors, investment managers, and managers of managers to rapidly aggregate, normalize, translate, and transmit investment data to their clients. QEDLink utilizes a network of interfaces with connectivity to hundreds of custodian banks, investment managers, prime brokers, and other financial institutions that leverages over 20 years of QED development for many of the country’s largest pension plans, plan sponsors, and investment managers. QEDLink performs the essential tasks of collecting custodian or manager data, normalizing the data for ease of use, translating the data for use in other applications (such as data warehouses or reporting tools), and transmitting the data to other data consumers. http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/qbriefing_market_data.htm MARLTON, NJ, September 28, 2007 - If you’ve already decided that managing your firm’s portfolios and accounting for your organization’s investments are best done with a comprehensive, specialized software package, why not use a comprehensive, specialized source for obtaining all of your organization’s referential data? In many cases, financial organizations need to look no further than to their portfolio management and investment accounting software providers for their referential data. Offering value-added services, many of these software providers also offer complete spectrums of referential data, including market prices, benchmark data, corporate actions, security master file information, and other types of high-demand data that are needed for effective management of investments. Read this briefing from Laura Castle and Steven M. Kendus of QED Financial Systems to learn how you can entrust your portfolio management software provider with finding and supplying your organization with the right market data that fits your business needs and meets your budget. http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/qbriefing_LGIP.htm MARLTON, NJ, August 31, 2007 - LGIPs make a lot of sense. These liquidity pools (Local Government Investment Pools for the uninitiated) have been around for a long time and have come a long way since the Orange County scandal of 1994. Now, they're pretty-much taken for granted--but they shouldn't be. I'm not alluding to risk factors, although risk management typically is a high-priority, as it should be. Rather, I'm referring to the extreme range of actual efficiencies gained through LGIPs. In short, some states have figured it out, and others are still working on it. The prize can be elusive, but need not be. This insightful briefing from QED Financial Systems' Matt Mille, a veteran of twenty-five years in the financial services industry, describes an important reality that any governmental unit involved with an LGIP should be aware of. http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/news/QED and CUSIP Now Release.pdf NEW YORK, August 14, 2007 – The CUSIP Service Bureau (CSB), the leading provider of unique issuer and instrument identifiers, today announced that QED Financial Systems has contracted to use CUSIP NOW, the CSB’s innovative service that delivers new CUSIP issues and reference data to market participants every 15 minutes. CUSIP is a unique, intelligent, 9-digit identifier permanently assigned to individual securities and their issuers. http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/news/QED_Data_connection.pdf MARLTON, NJ — July 30, 2007— In July 2007, QED Financial Systems introduced QED Data Connection, a solution that provides comprehensive securities data to QED clients via single, customized data feeds that enable organizations to save time and control costs. QED Data Connection provides users of QED's Q2 Investment Workflow System or QED Datamart with up-to-date market prices, security master data, GICS data, corporate actions announcements, indices, and constituent data. http://www.qedfinancialsystems.com/qbriefing_onshore_outsourcing.htm When decision makers within investment organizations are asked about outsourcing their investment accounting and reporting tasks, many respond with the same answers. “They won’t understand our business.” “Outsourcing takes jobs from Americans.” “We can’t really decrease our costs by much.” These common responses, while valid on some levels, do not necessarily apply to all outsourcing. In fact, with outsourcing providers offering investment accounting, reporting, and other financial services domestically, growing numbers of financial organizations, including public treasuries, pension funds, investment advisors, asset managers, and family offices, are increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and saving American jobs by outsourcing to onshore firms. (Steven M. Kendus, Vice President of Marketing with QED Financial Systems, addresses the common myths associated with outsourcing investment accounting and reporting tasks and provides useful insight into the benefits of outsourcing middle- and back-office functions to domestic firms.)