MENA Asset Management Survey 2012 - National Bank of Abu Dhabi

Regulatory Trends
identify higher-risk clients, annual or ad hoc reviews of existing records, and particular
attention given to unusual transactions. This includes checking all clients against the
UN’s lists of “designated” persons prior to opening a new account and on a daily basis
for existing clients. Records of the client information, account details and transactions
must be maintained for at least ten years, and made available on a timely basis to the
Authority upon request.
What does this mean for investment managers’ systems?
To ensure that the composition of their portfolios does not “drift” from regulatory
minimums and maximums due to buy and sell decisions, purchases and redemptions, or
changes in market conditions, fund managers need to check them constantly. Many
firms have therefore reviewed or upgraded their systems to ensure they can monitor their
positions in real time and run pre-trade compliance checks. Having a platform that also
integrates investor accounting and servicing functionality with core portfolio accounting
and reporting capabilities brings further benefits; on a single platform, managers can
quickly see any investor’s positions in relation to those of others at any given time, and
make adjustments as needed to stay within prescribed percentages.
A trade order management system with portfolio modeling and rebalancing tools, and an
integrated pre and post-trade compliance solution can also be a great help for fund and
asset managers to comply with the asset allocation requirements, as well as best
execution and prompt allocation provisions, and the calculation of daily NAVs and unit
prices, particularly if these tools integrate with the firm’s portfolio management system.
Many managers have also turned in recent years to research management systems, as
these make it easy to capture, store, search and find information on any investment
opportunity a manager is pursuing—third-party research, meeting notes, email
correspondence, articles from the Internet, earnings reports and more. It enables
managers to make better- informed decisions that are thoroughly documented and
demonstrates to regulators that the manager has a consistent, disciplined due diligence
process. And of course, managers need to ensure the seamless delivery of third-party
data into all their systems, including custodial and market data, in a robust and reliable
manner. Many have realized that having the right IT integration in place can save time
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