Thought leadership in investment management: SimCorp StrategyLab research programme 2010-11
In direct response to a new agenda in the investment management industry, with increased focus on risk management, cost control and growth opportunities, SimCorp established its independent research institution, SimCorp StrategyLab, in December 2008. Through its extensive research and know-how, the institution’s aim is to provide insight into some of the many challenges facing professional asset managers throughout the world. Going forward SimCorp StrategyLab will continue to seek to suggest ways to meet the challenges and to share best practices.
by Lars Falkenberg, Assistant Director of SimCorp StrategyLab
Download article as pdf
To find appropriate solutions and to gather relevant best practices for the top strategic institutional levels of the investment management industry, SimCorp StrategyLab carries out its own research and analysis of trends and challenges in the financial sector. The research programme is carried out in close collaboration with internationally recognised academics and established industry experts. As a result, SimCorp StrategyLab is able to contribute competent suggestions for best practices, which are intended to minimise risk, to find ways to achieve sustainable cost savings and to enable growth. Figure 1 outlines the mission and the vision of SimCorp StrategyLab.
ORGANISATION
SimCorp StrategyLab is formally organised under the management of a board of directors. The chairman of SimCorp StrategyLab’s board is the CEO of SimCorp, Peter L. Ravn (Ph.D.). SimCorp StrategyLab is headed by the renowned Ingo Walter, Seymour Milstein Professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University, who is in charge of the research institution’s academic affiliations and oversees the quality of its research work and related activities. Along with SimCorp StrategyLab’s partners, and building bridges between theory and practice, are leading academics, industry experts and executives who contribute to its research programme and other activities.
Figure 1. SimCorp StrategyLab: mission and vision
2008-09 activities
In its first year of existence, SimCorp StrategyLab’s research focused, in line with the institution’s mission, on the three fundamental drivers of the institutional asset management industry: risk, cost and growth.
As influential outcomes of this research, SimCorp StrategyLab published two outstanding survey reports: ‘Report on Global Investment Management Risk Survey 2009’ and ‘Report on Global Investment Management Cost Survey 2009’. A third report based on a survey about enabling growth will be published in April 2010, entitled ‘Report on Global Investment Management Growth Survey 2010’. Correspondingly and with the top strategic institutional levels of the investment management industry in mind, the institution also published two books; one on risk – ‘Understanding the financial crisis: investment, risk and governance’ – and one on costs – ‘Operational control in asset management: processes and costs’. A third book in the same series, dealing with the subject of growth, initiated in 2009 and to be published in the early summer of 2010, is entitled ‘Growth and value creation in asset management’. The valuable findings of the surveys and research work have created media headlines and cover stories in leading publications like the Financial Times’s FTfm section.
Among SimCorp StrategyLab’s other activities, an executive master class on growth in the investment management industry was performed by SimCorp StrategyLab Director Ingo Walter in connection with SimCorp’s annual industry summit conference: SimCorp Dimension International User Community Meeting 2009. This event also hosted the announcement of MEAG as the winner of the SimCorp StrategyLab Risk Management Excellence Award 2009 at a ceremony in Luxembourg on 17 September 2009, with an audience of 200 senior delegates of the international investment management industry. This award has been established for the purpose of rewarding and promoting best practice within risk management in the global investment management industry.
2010-11 activities
The second period of SimCorp StrategyLab’s research activities will focus on the four major sectors of the global asset management industry:
• investment funds
• asset management (notably discretionary asset pools)
• pension funds
• insurance funds.
The guiding perception is that these sectors, which all face a set of strategic and tactical challenges, along with wrenching changes in the economic, financial and regulatory environment, can benefit from useful insights achieved from SimCorp StrategyLab’s work on risk, cost and growth issues within each of these individual sectors.
Rather than taking a descriptive approach, efforts will focus on a more prescriptive angle in order to define industry best-practice. The work will be based on primary and secondary research and industry practices. With these efforts in mind, a number of small teams of leading thinkers from the academic world and the financial industry will examine the sector/issue intersections (Figure 2).
The examination of the intersections by the teams will result in four white papers, which will seek to convey the current state of knowledge within the four sectors and point the way forward from a management-strategy and public-policy perspective. The white papers debating the key industry issues for the immediate and medium-term future, options and recommendations will be published at regular intervals throughout 2010 and early 2011.
Among SimCorp StrategyLab’s other activities for the 2010-11 period and following up on the SimCorp StrategyLab Risk Mangement Award 2009, SimCorp StrategyLab is seeking applicants for the SimCorp Strategy Excellence Awards 2010, which will award outstanding and innovative leaders in the ability to mitigate risk, reduce cost and enable growth. The three winners will be announced at a ceremony on 9 September 2010 at the SimCorp Dimension International User Community Meeting 2010 in Berlin.
Figure 2. Sector/issue intersections to be examined by teams of leading thinkers from the academic world and the financial industry as part of SimCorp StrategyLab activities 2010-11
