• Blog
  • 5 Min Read
  • January 26, 2021

Data-as-a-Service Solutions: An Opportunity for Asset Managers to Optimize Technology Budgets

Technology managers at asset management firms understand the challenge of balancing spending and investments at a time when fee compression is common. However, technology itself is an investment; choosing the right systems and services can provide the type of intelligence that generates a true advantage. One technology that offers a chance at differentiation – with additional efficiency benefits – is data-as-a-service (DaaS).

DaaS has many implications for the asset management industry. For example: Operations teams are required to capture markets data, benchmarks, and index data on a daily, if not real time, basis. The maintenance and frequent development cycles required to support this is costly and resource intensive. Organizations that turn this effort over to industry experts, will be able to lower costs and direct their development resources toward more impactful projects.

Unfortunately, in many financial services firms, a majority of technology dollars are committed to keeping back-office wheels turning, supporting and maintaining utilities that are essential to keeping the business running. Utility development is not a differentiator but requires ongoing dollars and staff attention. These efforts can be time consuming, expensive, and lock resources into protracted ongoing maintenance.

Complicating this situation, firms struggle to attract talent in back-office support departments. Talent is drawn to specialized technology firms, where technology is the product, as opposed to the back-office function of an asset management firm where technology is an expense to be managed.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to this challenge. Specialized firms now provide suites of tools that are easy to implement, maintain, and allow staff to concentrate efforts on objectives that may differentiate their firm from their peers. Using DaaS, firms can more efficiently manage their data and gain differentiation benefits needed to thrive in a competitive environment.

Clearwater’s DaaS offering is made for investment data and is a cloud-native product that transparently delivers multi-asset-class data from any custodian, service or data provider, client or vendor platform. DaaS facilitates a comprehensive view into all your assets, holdings, cash, and performance across all asset classes, regions, business units, and corresponding platforms.

Here at Clearwater, we are leveraging our industry-leading expertise in cloud-native, SaaS technology to deliver a suite of data products that provide transparency, flexibility, and customization. Our products enable users to select and curate custom data sets, configure data delivery, and customize reporting.

What Clearwater’s Dataasa-Service offers:

  • Aggregation engine
  • Validation engine
  • Investment data warehouse
  • Insight into data lineage
  • An API to ingest data
  • Reporting as a service

As a specialized technology vendor, Clearwater offers attractive opportunities to rescue financial services firms from ongoing utility maintenance based on the following:

  • As true subject matter experts, Clearwater has the skills necessary to assure clients that excellence in their discipline is always provided, guaranteeing effective implementation and high-quality support.
  • Clearwater’s DaaS product allows firms to remain competitive by offering the back-office support they need to aggregate data and consolidate reporting into one view.
  • Delivery of DaaS via the SaaS model assures quick implementation and zero data center investment. Speed to market and back-end simplification are immediate benefits
  • Technology management can direct dollars, and staff resources, in such a way that optimizes talent, technology investment, and differentiation, resulting in differentiation and competitive advantage.