Allianz Global Investors, a leading active asset manager, has adopted IHS Markit’s leading investment management platform, thinkFolio, as the strategic decision support solution for its global fixed income business. The firm will leverage thinkFolio as a managed service hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Allianz GIobal Investors’ fixed income team, responsible for managing EUR193 billion, has broadened and deepened its capabilities significantly over many years and recently evolved its business model into an integrated, global structure. As part of this evolution, the organisation is embarking on an ambitious plan to enhance and enrich the decision support platform and toolkit for its global portfolio management and cross-functional investment teams.
thinkFolio will provide Allianz Global Investors with enhanced decision support, portfolio modelling and trade generation. As part of the managed service delivery of thinkFolio, IHS Markit will manage upgrades and real-time feeds, and execute overnight data loads and start-of-day processes.
“We are very happy to have selected thinkFolio as our decision support tool for fixed income at Allianz Global Investors. The functionality and customisation capabilities that thinkFolio offers are complementary to our unified investment process, and thinkFolio’s ability to handle all instruments within the fixed income asset class is important in helping our diverse range of strategies meet the expectations of our clients,” says Franck Dixmier, Global Head of Fixed Income at Allianz Global Investors.
“Allianz Global Investors is embarking on a substantial and strategic initiative to upscale and improve our fixed income operating model,” says Markus Lohmann, Global Head of IT at Allianz Global Investors. “We see thinkFolio as a cornerstone of the program to enable and unlock our ambitious target state investment workflows, business processes and integration flexibility. We have a long standing and productive relationship with IHS Markit, including our use of their Enterprise Data Management (EDM) solution, and look forward to partnering with their senior team to execute on this operating vision.”
“Given its impressive and long-standing footprint across global, actively managed strategies, we are delighted to support Allianz Global Investors over the course of their exciting transformation journey and beyond,” says Brett Schechterman, Managing Director and Global Head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit.
“As asset managers face an increasingly competitive market and challenging operating margins, IHS Markit is well-positioned to provide the technology solutions and services required to enable Allianz Global Investors to scale efficiently including accessing new markets, deploying new cross asset investment strategies, and growing assets in private and public markets without disruption,” said Keith Viverito, Managing Director, EMEA Sales for Financial Services Solutions at IHS Markit.
Schechterman adds: “thinkFolio, with fixed income investing at its foundation, will continue to advance its suite of portfolio management and modelling capabilities and open architecture to suit the next-generation requirements of our clients.”
