Dealis Fund Operations
Dealis enables and supports growth strategy with SimCorp Dimension
Choosing SimCorp Dimension as their mutual software system enabled two of Germany’s foremost investment management companies – Allianz Global Investors and DekaBank – to fully leverage synergies and volumes in their joint venture company Dealis. A successfully integrated and scalable investment management system provided exactly the optimisation and growth possibilities desired by the two fund managers.
Looking for optimisation and growth opportunities
Dealis is the joint venture of two of Germany’s foremost investment management companies − Allianz Global Investors and DekaBank. Independently, both companies had found it difficult to achieve efficiency improvements in their already well-organised back-office units. As a result, they had been looking for other ways to achieve optimisation and growth.
In the words of Mr. Trageiser, Spokesman of the Board of the Managing Directors at Dealis, both investment management companies were in a situation where, "...only a massive increase in processing volumes, e.g. through a joint venture, would create sizeable synergies." In January 2009, the two companies agreed to merge their back offices in a new company named Dealis.
Choosing a software system geared to growth
The due diligence process by both companies had singled out SimCorp Dimension as the most attractive solution on the market, offering comprehensive, guaranteed up-to-date functionality and the ability to meet Dealis’s specific demands for flexibility, scalability, usability, customisation, performance and reliability – all in a uniquely configurable and fully integrated, modular software system.
"With the help of the SimCorp Dimension high-performance platform, we can tailor our services to meet the needs of clients and at the same reflect the latest legal requirements as well as financial instruments."
- Roman G. Trageiser, Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors, Dealis
Dealis also felt confident that SimCorp Dimension could handle the migration process of DekaBank funds, as well as fulfil scalability requirements and maximise synergies – the raison d’être itself of the joint venture.
Allianz Global Investors had already in 2005 chosen SimCorp Dimension as its investment management system and successfully migrated all of its funds. Positive experiences at Allianz and due diligence by both companies convinced management at Dealis that SimCorp Dimension would be the right fund management system for the joint venture, and the pooling of activities and resources began.
Successful migration process
Successful migration of DekaBank funds to the SimCorp Dimension platform was a cornerstone, which enabled growth right from the very creation of the joint venture company Dealis. An automated best practice-based process allowed up to 50 DekaBank funds to be migrated per week on to the new common back-office investment management platform, totalling approximately 2,500 mutual and special funds in Germany and Luxembourg. The fund migration project has no equal in its scope – neither in terms of the number of funds nor the different classes of recorded securities.
Smooth transition period
The new company Dealis accomplished the task of attending to its day-to-day business of administering the migrated funds of both Allianz Global Investors and DekaBank with an uninterrupted high degree of service and quality. Already the initial results achieved by merging the back offices of two of Germany’s leading investment management companies proved that this requirement was more than fulfilled as no client obligations were compromised. Even more, the choice of SimCorp Dimension to serve as the mutual software system for founding Germany’s largest fund administrator meant that Dealis was able to pursue an active agenda geared to growth almost from day one.
"Successful use of the uniform system platform engendered in SimCorp Dimension affords maximum flexibility so that processes can be systematically adjusted to suit our individual client requirement"
- Roman G. Trageiser, Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors, Dealis
Optimisaton benefits achieved while allowing more focus on client requirements – a win-win situation
For both companies – Allianz Global Investors and DekaBank – Dealis produced precisely the optimisation benefits that were sought after: higher processing volumes, shared IT costs, as well as maximised intellectual pro-perty synergies, while achieving all this without increasing ‘time-to-market’ for successfully responding to client require-ments. Looking back, Mr. Trageiser confirms that Dealis has not run into any systemic bottlenecks. "I think that speaks clearly for the performance of our software provider SimCorp, as well as our internal project management expertise," he states.
Already in its brief existence, Dealis has successfully positioned itself as a specialised service partner guided by two strategic goals: firstly, to act as a stable and reliable partner for its clients; and secondly, to add value by offering them to outsource value chain activities not belonging to their core business.
Mr. Trageiser confirms that the SimCorp solution is instrumental in giving Dealis a competitive advantage when pursuing these goals, explaining that "successful use of the uniform system platform engendered in SimCorp Dimension affords maximum flexibility so that processes can be systematically adjusted to suit our individual client requirements."
Operational platform leverages efficiencies and synergies to full potential
In close collaboration with SimCorp, Dealis has ensured that its software solution can support and enable a fast-paced growth strategy. The SimCorp Dimension system applied by Dealis allows it to make processes even more client-oriented and suited to its specialised needs. Thus SimCorp‘s investment management solution plays an integral role in Dealis’s overall business model in terms of correctly aligning software systems to combine the best features from the perspective of efficiencies and synergies.
In describing the measureable benefits achieved by choosing SimCorp Dimension as the investment management software platform for enabling growth, Mr. Trageiser cites as follows:
- flexibility and scalability in seizing growth opportunities
- integrated services offered to internal and external clients
- consistently high and reliable service levels
- measurable productivity gains and cost reductions.
Dealis positioned for future growth with flexible and scalable operating model
The result of a successful migration and joint venture is that Dealis now administers approximately 2,500 funds on a SimCorp Dimension platform as at year-end 2010. From this perspective, Dealis is confident that this investment management system is uniquely capable of not only supporting its current and future strategic initiatives but also will continuously enable its growth strategies in the long term. In the years to come, Dealis will focus on attracting new clients and is already now offering its competitive fund administration services to fund companies in Germany and Luxembourg – enabled and supported by its future-proof SimCorp Dimension software platform solution.
About Dealis Fund Operations GmbH
Dealis is the joint venture of two of Germany’s largest investment management companies, Allianz Global Investors and DekaBank. Administrating over €340bn in assets under management, in around 2,500 German and Luxembourg mutual and special funds (as at 31 December 2010), Dealis groups together all the central back office tasks of these leading German asset managers. This makes Dealis the largest provider of fund accounting and fund administration services in Germany.
