Case Study

Pictet Asset Management Transforms Workflows and Accelerates Productivity

Company

Pictet Asset Management is an independently owned asset management company with assets under management of US 250 billion. Pictet Asset Management offers multiple strategies across equity, multi-asset, FX and fixed income, with 18 offices globally and 1,000+ employees — including over 400 investment professionals.

Challenge

Up until 2019, Pictet Asset Management had a range of standard trading workflows in place, such as FIX and communication between apps that have been fine-tuned and automated. However, the company was struggling with cross-application workflows. Trying to share information from different types of apps — in-house, third-party and native — was a significant challenge Pictet was facing. The team acknowledged that interoperability was the key to solving this, and after careful consideration, the team concluded that interop.io would successfully deliver the application integration solution they need.

Solution

interop.io was used to automate three workflows:

Money Markets Workflow

A cumbersome, multi-step process was streamlined. Yield calculations were automated, including pricing future cash flows with currency exposure by automatically connecting to Bloomberg to price FX forwards.

FX Pricer Workflow

A backend FIX gateway with connectivity to a number of liquidity providers feeds a database of spot prices. Traders get a real-time view of the best FX prices required to hedge a particular bond order with a single click in Charles River (their OMS) and can spawn historical Bloomberg charts for additional context.

Credit and Axe Data Workflow

Axe data from specific counterparties and market aggregators is consolidated and made available from a single click inside Charles River, immediately showing the trader how liquid the issue is and what the current prices are. Traders can then collaborate with the fund manager to find alpha, by seeing the contents of existing portfolios, interested buyers, and being presented with similar bonds. Context is added by using the Bloomberg API to calculate spreads, complemented by internal analytics, shown using real-time charts.

Now we’re victims of our own success because we’ve got people banging on the door, saying can you do this, can you do that. Because they’re understanding the concept and the power of interoperability.”

— Dan Benninger, Product Owner

The Outcome

The results indicate a saving of up to ten minutes per trade, enabling workers to concentrate on gaining alpha rather than performing routine tasks.

An interesting observation from electronic equities trading was that many employees felt they may lose their jobs due to automation. It was crucial to Pictet to keep everyone informed during the journey, and to assure that workers would be maximized and use the time saved through automation to focus on higher value tasks.

Once Pictet’s team realized they were not being replaced — and that in fact, this efficiency allowed them to prioritize “bigger and better things” — it became easier to get projects moving. As Carl James, Global Head of Fixed Income Trading, noted: “Organizational and cultural change management is as big a part of this — if not bigger than the technical journey.”

Future Plans

In 2021, interop.io, was awarded the WatersTechnology.com award for Best Buy-Side Implementation with Pictet Asset Management. Through this project, the firm has gained insight into the effectiveness of interoperability, witnessing firsthand how it enables people to do their best work. This is only the beginning of what Pictet will be capable of achieving with interoperability. Dan Benninger, Product Owner, Dealing, commented: “Now we’re victims of our own success because we’ve got people banging on the door, saying can you do this, can you do that. Because they’re understanding the concept and the power of interoperability.”