TITLE:
The Feasibility of Using an Automated Net Asset Value Validation Tool in an International Investment Bank
AUTHORS:
Sammer Markos, Nhien-An Le-Khac, M-Tahar Kechadi
KEYWORDS:
Data Mining, Funds, Investment Banking, Alternative Investment, NAV, Hedge Funds
JOURNAL NAME:
Technology and Investment,
Vol.1 No.3,
August
27,
2010
ABSTRACT: Fund administration is a relatively new service that some banks and back office offer Investment Company’s. This service was regarded as “boutique” in some countries as it was not a necessity hence not enforced by law to have independent calculation and verification of a fund price. However, this sector of business was and has been a major factor in the economic boom for many countries worldwide. In general most companies have many human resources tagged to this service. This is mainly due to the high volume of manual work that needs to be carried out to validate a Net Asset Value. If the Net Asset Value is calculated incorrectly and hence not validated correctly then there is huge repercussions for the company that calculated the Net Asset Value (monetary, reputation, losing a client). With the turn in the current climate the operational requirements that was once affordable has snowballed out of control, this is why invest company’s are finding ways to reduce costs and hence use less labour intensive methods or relocate these specific jobs to lower cost countries such as Eastern Europe and India. However, this is not without its own set of problems, some being that most companies and in our case, the company always employs a distributed service requirement. Within the scope of a collaboration project which focuses on a Net Asset Value automated validation solution to replace a labour intensive manual approach. In this paper, we research the feasibility of using such a tool in a funds business of an international investment bank where parts of this process are based in Asia and Europe. Our approach is based on surveying people that are currently working in the Net Asset Value validation process, and in turn analyse the results attained. Throughout this process, we must not only focus on the efficient method of applying a Net Asset Value validation automated solution but we must also provide an overview of the important factors in building a solutions to be used in a fund administration environment.