Schroders Australia enables growth through SimCorp Dimension

Schroders Australia, with assets under management of over AUD 25 billion, has removed key system risks and business constraints with the migration of Sydney based portfolios to the SimCorp Dimension investment management system.

SimCorp Dimension replaces a 12-year old incumbent system (Portia) and a number of in-house settlement applications for Schroders in the Asia Pacific region. Australia is the final country to be moved onto the business’s Singapore-based investment management system alongside; Hong Kong, Japan and Indonesia which were migrated onto SimCorp Dimension in 2009.

“The initial decision to select SimCorp Dimension was part of global strategy to future-proof the business and move away from legacy custody-based systems,” says Jason Wood, Head of Asia Pacific IT at Schroders. Wood says the Australian business had materially expanded over a short period of time, developed a strong pipeline and was keen to invest in the core platform to support future growth.

“With SimCorp Dimension we are now running a true single platform in the Asia Pacific region that meets multinational requirements and covers multiple time zones,” says Mr. Wood. According to Mr. Wood, each country’s migration onto the regional platform has had unique considerations and objectives. For Australia, the challenge was to identify gaps between the existing Singapore hub operations process and tools set and the requirements of the local book of business based in Sydney.

“Now that we have migrated Australia onto the regional platform, we can maintain a high level of service during periods of growth, without requiring additional resources,” says Mr. Wood.

The process of overlaying the Australian business onto SimCorp Dimension took just over 12 months to complete and was arguably the smoothest transition experienced by Schroders to date. With four countries in the Asia Pacific region already operating on SimCorp Dimension, Schroders opted to undertake the migration of the Australian office using internal resources.

Schroders Asia Pacific Chief Operating Officer, Murray Coble says the key focus during the migration was to maintain the company’s consistent business service levels. “With the platform already established in Singapore, the main challenge was to ensure that our own teams in Singapore and Sydney understood what was required and continued to maintain the high standard of service to the business throughout and post migration. Pleasingly the transition occurred seamlessly to the business and our clients,” says Mr. Coble.

The full implementation of Schroders’ regional platform demonstrates the robustness and flexibility of SimCorp Dimension, says SimCorp Asia Managing Director, Peter Hill. “The use of a single platform has enabled Schroders to leverage Singapore as a central hub to accommodate growth in each Asia Pacific satellite office and to divide the cost of its toolset across the region,” says Mr. Hill.

With Australia now running on the Singapore-based platform, Mr. Hill is proud of the partnership that has been forged between SimCorp and Schroders. “The final stage of implementation for Schroders’ Asia Pacific regional platform required extensive planning and coordination. With the system now fully in place Schroders is free to embrace growth opportunities in a reduced risk and reduced cost environment across each of its businesses in the Asia Pacific region,” says Mr. Hill.