Jump to content
March 1st 2008

New Product

Paladyne goes agnostic with SunGard back-office offering

Hedge fund technology provider Paladyne Systems has begun offering SunGard's Visual Portfolio Manager (VPM) portfolio accounting product as an optional component of its browser-based front-to-back platform.

Paladyne clients previously only had Advent Geneva as an option through Paladyne; the VPM integration enables the firm to take a more vendor-agnostic approach and provide hedge fund clients with more options, according to Paladyne chief executive Sameer Shalaby.

The SunGard VPM product currently has about 45 hedge fund clients using the system for portfolio management, general ledger, and investor reporting functions. All modules of the Paladyne platform - order management; global security master; pricing and valuation; data warehouse; and reporting - have been integrated with the SunGard system.

Shalaby explains that the partnership with SunGard formalises an ongoing integration relationship: "We've seen that a number of our larger clients like to have one or two products installed locally, and some of these clients use VPM. We've had to integrate with VPM and ensure that everything was working, and we've been working with SunGard on that front for mutual clients that want, say, our security master or reporting warehouse product.

"From that perspective we're already integrated with VPM," he continues, adding that clients began requesting a more formalised partnership between Paladyne and SunGard.

"From Paladyne's perspective, this makes us more agnostic in the marketplace," Shalaby says. "That was already our model on the data side - we have relationships with Thomson, Reuters, S&P, Markit and other providers, and they all compete with one another; when we go to our hedge fund clients we tell them it's their decision as to which data vendors they want to use on the Paladyne system."

Going forward, Paladyne's clients' comfort levels with previous experience using accounting systems will dictate their decision to use either VPM or Advent Geneva for back-office operations, according to Shalaby.

"A lot of our clients are often spun off from larger firms, and if they were already using VPM they'll be comfortable using that system going forward. It's the same thing with Geneva." ><

Stewart Eisenhart

Bottom line: Providing more options for back-office applications should appeal to hedge fund clients looking for greater choice among ASP offerings.