Standard and proprietary: A Head of Operations' view of building the right foundation

As Head of Operations and Projects at Quoniam Asset Management since 2014, Thomas Schneider led the project that moved the firm to SimCorp One, leveraging SimCorp Managed Business Services. From his position running the implementation, Thomas explains how that decision is now the foundation of the firm's target operating model.

The solution

Quoniam selected SimCorp One, leveraging SimCorp Managed Business Services for data management and investment operations. The result is a unified platform that covers the full investment cycle and complements Quoniam’s proprietary tools.

Three factors shaped the decision:

1. SimCorp’s approach aligned directly with Quoniam’s standardization philosophy. The platform handles what should be standard; it leaves proprietary what must stay proprietary.
2. Confidence built through the onboarding process itself. By go-live, the handover was straightforward.
3. The project goal was never to implement a system. It was to achieve specific business outcomes: optimize portfolios daily, lay the foundation for portfolio growth, easily connect with execution management systems, and take on derivative instruments efficiently.

The business benefits

Standardize what doesn’t differentiate
At Quoniam, standardization enables automation, repeatability, and strong risk control in systematic investing. As a systematic manager, the choice was to keep research, portfolio construction, and trading logic proprietary. While post-trade processing, reconciliation, IBOR, regulatory reporting, and corporate actions processing run on SimCorp's platform. The result: the investment team concentrates on the models and decisions that define its edge.

Built to scale
The goal was to support future growth. The ability to build portfolios of up to 600-700 positions, connected easily to execution management systems, with derivative instruments handled efficiently. SimCorp absorbs the complexity so the investment team focuses on the decisions. The platform gives Quoniam the operational foundation to expand strategies and take on greater complexity as the business grows.

Connected intelligence
Axioma Portfolio Optimizer and Axioma Risk have always been at the core of Quoniam's investment process: constructing portfolios under complex constraints and maintaining a risk control framework across all asset classes. What's changed is the integration with SimCorp. The analytics and operational platform move as one, eliminating manual handoffs and enabling Quoniam to automate further and reduce complexity across the full investment cycle.

I would describe Quoniam’s relation with SimCorp as a strong working partnership. It is built on open dialog, commitment on both sides, and a shared focus on outcomes.

— Thomas Schneider, Head of Operations and Projects, Quoniam Asset Management