Columbus Avenue Consulting (Columbus), a global fund administrator, has selected SunGard’s FastVal, a portfolio valuation solution delivered on an ASP basis, to help independently value its clients portfolios. SunGard’s FastVal provides financial institutions with full transparency of the models and underlying market data used in the valuation, as well as enhanced Greeks, greater functionality in the running of intra-day valuations, and comprehensive product coverage across all asset classes. Columbus Avenue is the first customer to go-live on FastVal 3.0, SunGard’s latest FastVal release.
Columbus chose FastVal to help it mitigate operational risk, enhance transparency and improve overall operational risk. FastVal will help Columbus to collect pricing and valuation data, with round-the-clock feeds from exchanges and other data providers. Up-to-date valuations can be generated up to four times a day. The solution provides access to underlying data and covers most financial instruments, meaning that Columbus is well-positioned to take on funds with more complex structures, as their business continues to grow.
Columbus is already a user of SunGard’s VPM portfolio accounting solution. It’s selection of FastVal was based in part on FastVal’s direct integration to VPM. The integration between SunGard’s FastVal and VPM solutions will allow Columbus to pass up-to-date valuation and pricing data directly to VPM’s general ledger, eliminating the need for various file conversions between disparate vendor platforms. This helps Columbus to consolidate and streamline its vendor relationships to help provide quicker time to market, as well as further increasing efficiency and mitigating risk around redundant data transfer.
Bonnie Han, partner at Columbus Avenue Consulting, commented: “We feel that the integration between the two SunGard solutions will save us a great deal of time, in addition to reducing the risks inherent in our manual data entry. As our business grows, and we continue to take on funds with more complex strategies, it is essential for us to have a solution that can provide accurate, transparent pricing and valuation across our entire customer portfolio.”
Gavin Lee, chief operating officer of SunGard’s FastVal business unit, commented: “Investors are placing big demands on firms to provide greater transparency in the valuation of their portfolios. FastVal is well positioned to provide Columbus Avenue with the high level of transparency required to appease these demands.”
