The Foundations fund aims to achieve an additional 4-6% return on the value of investors’ portfolios by gradual leveraging, but in a unique way that does not involve the usual levels of risk, volatility, cost, restriction, and administration. An existing life policy portfolio (or other suitable asset) is assigned to the Foundations Program and its collateral value is used to participate in a collectivised borrowing and reinvestment Program. Provided that the asset participates in the program for at least five years, the investor will receive the additional profit generated upon exit.

We began with an extensive requirements gathering exercise combining analysis of the program documentation, interviews with key stakeholders, and observation. The main participants in the business are located in both the Isle of Man and Guernsey, but also travel extensively and are rarely in the same location. We were able to create a specification for a system that fulfilled the procedural requirements of fund administration as laid out in the offering document, but which also achieved a greater degree of automation than the client and the administrators had thought possible, while retaining the flexibility to deal with individual circumstances.

Development of a system

Due to the distributed nature and mobility of the user base, and the desire to retain flexibility in the choice of administrators, as well as the inherent advantages of no per-user licensing and installation issues, the system was designed to be web-based. This also enables Assanka to provide support easily and efficiently, and for entire organisations of new users to be enrolled in a matter of minutes.

The entire development schedule and process was managed by Assanka, keeping all stakeholders up to date despite widely spaced geography. We pro-actively prompted client deliverables to ensure that we were able to achieve critical path milestones without unnecessary delay. The new system launched on time, and to budget.

An orderly transition

Whilst Foundations did not have a dedicated software system set up already, the fund had been running for just over a year and administration had been conducted using spreadsheets and a rudimentary Microsoft Access database. These tools were reaching the limits of their capacity, but contained live data that needed to be migrated. We imported the data from these sources and continued to operate both in parallel for a month, during which we were able to identify and correct errors in the data.

Smooth running

During each monthly cycle of operation, the Foundations System manages data on participants and assets, maintains ledgers and runs regular processes to allocate points and profits according to the Foundations rules. All these calculations are performed automatically, efficiently and accurately by a system designed around the needs of this fund.

Whilst the system takes responsibility for most calculations, it also ensures data integrity is maintained. All data operations performed by the system are transactional, ensuring that updates are never left in an incomplete or partially complete state, and rolling back to a known safe state in the event that an update or series of updates fails.

Although users of the system must be experienced fund managers and familiar with the rules of the Foundations program, they need not be familiar with the system itself. Martin Treanor, Sales Director says:

Assanka helped us to envisage a solution that would be both robust and flexible. Accuracy in reporting is vital to our proposition and so too is the need to efficiently relay information to our customers, distributors and counterparties. Assanka’s approach was refreshing because they started with a blank canvas and then fully researched the unique complexities of our business before they began to formulate a proposal that addressed our needs. We are delighted with the results which not only accommodate our current system needs but also provide us with a stable yet flexible platform from which to support further growth and development. We look forward to continuing our relationship with Assanka and are excited about future opportunities to further enhance our services

Bespoke reporting

We assessed the administrators’ and promoters’ requirements for reporting, and produced a range of reports in Excel-compatible CSV and Word-compatible RTF formats, allowing the users the greatest degree of flexibility over the report output and formatting. The layout of form letters and statements was designed to take account of the entirely bespoke Foundations brand requirements, providing consistent style across all client-facing documentation.

For audit purposes the system also retains a permanent copy of every report generated and provides a searchable index of these previously generated reports, whether they be internal reports, spreadsheets, statements or form letters.

Access and oversight

Access to the system is made from any internet-connected computer and secured with SSL encryption. Each user is configured for access to appropriate parts of the system and data relevant to their role, whether they be an administrator, promoter or support engineer. Information is restricted according to each user’s role.

Having securely identified each user logged in, the system also logs each data operation performed along with the identity of the user that actioned it. This audit trail enables all activity to be traced back easily to the moment that the data was changed.

Triple strength support

Our approach to support works on three levels – Preventative, Proactive and Reactive. We aim to prevent the majority of potential problems before they occur by ensuring that hardware and operating systems are up to date, systems are adequately protected and all activity on the system is properly validated and logged. Automatic backup systems run daily to archive data to an off-site location, ready to rapidly restore in the event of a problem.

Occasionally problems do occur, and when they do, Assanka’s advanced error handling system detects and logs the error, files a complete report with our support management system, and provides a tracking code to the user allowing correspondence on the issue to be traced back to the original fault quickly and efficiently. In this way, we usually discover problems proactively, and often resolve them before anyone is aware that an error has occurred.

Finally, all Assanka’s web based software is built to incorporate our web helpdesk as part of the integrated user experience. This means that reactive support can be obtained quickly and easily without needing any further contact information, passwords or reference numbers. We track our response to every support request via the web helpdesk, recording response and resolution times to ensure conformance with our SLA obligations. We offer SLAs on four levels to match the client’s requirements, so Foundations selected the response level that suited them.

Where the problem relates to the client’s ability to contact the system over the web, or where they simply prefer to pick up the phone, we also operate a telephone support service, available 24 hours a day.

Ongoing development

We continue to advise Foundations on the best ways to achieve higher efficiency as their fund grows, including barcode tracking of application forms, and automatic parsing of PDF statements from asset providers to avoid the need to key in data.

With many more ways to trade and new markets opening all the time, investors and other finance professionals are increasingly profiting from short-term positions that do not allow time for digesting news on a 24 hour publishing cycle.

‘Today’ is old news

Markets move by the second, not by the day, and technology can provide the ability to bring real-time publishing to real-time business news. With world class, razor sharp insight and cutting edge technology, The Financial Times and Assanka have created Alphaville: the world’s first live publishing platform for markets news and commentary.

The Financial Times is known globally as one of the world’s leading business newspapers, recognised internationally for it’s authority, integrity and accuracy. Through FT.com, the world’s most popular business website, the formiddable strength of FT’s editorial team finds a global audience on the web.

Combining the technological expertise of Assanka’s Web 2.0 team and a dedicated FT editorial team headed by development editor Paul Murphy, Alphaville represents the cutting edge of real-time market reporting.

As fast as it gets

The Alphaville day starts at around 3am London time, when reporters in FT’s Hong Kong office start compiling the stories that will matter to London’s business community today. By 5:45am, these stories are online and visible on Alphaville’s front page, and at a few minutes to six everything that’s been published so far is sent out to thousands of Blackberries and other handheld devices across the capital, along with many desktop subscribers. The 6AM Cut kick-starts traffic to Alphaville as the City wakes up and the London Alphaville team takes over publishing content.

As traders and investors arrive at work and log on to Alphaville, the team are busy publishing breaking stories and preparing for the daily Markets Live broadcast. Every time a new post is made, it slides unprompted onto the screens of all current users, making Alphaville a genuinely live website – there’s never any need to refresh to get new content. At 11am, it’s on air for Markets Live, a unique markets commentary service streaming real-time text chat to the online audience. Viewers can comment on the unfolding chat as it happens, and their comments are flashed onto the screens of the journalists allowing instant reaction and engagement with the audience.

At midday, the daily report on Credit Default Swaps appears, the first regular report on this rapidly emerging market, and as the afternoon progresses other specialist content includes reports on the movements of key people and positions at the main banks and listed companies.

When the day is over, around 25 posts will have been made by a busy team, and these will continue to be searchable both from Alphaville and FT.com, but at 3am the front page is cleared ready for another day to begin. Murphy’s team are creating content for Alphaville throughout the day, and he’s unequivocal about the experience:

“Frankly it’s fantastic. Some back-office stuff can be clunky, but Alphaville is a dream to use. When you’re a journalist used to an eight hour deadline and suddenly you have to deal with a fifteen second publishing cycle, the last thing you want to worry about is the kit not working. On that score we certainly have no complaints – it’s exactly what we asked for”

Features for no-nonsense users

Like most blogs Alphaville offers RSS feed syndication, on the front page, categories and comments on any post. However, Alphaville supports its time-poor users with extra features designed to get users to the information they want as quickly as possible. All posts are expandable to view the whole content without clicking through. Users can log in and post comments using their existing FT.com user account, avoiding the need to register separately for Alphaville. New content is streamed to the browser automatically so there is no need to refresh. A tag cloud represents the companies whose names are making the news today, and allows instant one-click searches for related stories. It all adds up to a slick experience for users and a powerful tool for the editorial team.

Reflecting on the project and the relationship FT have with Assanka, Paul Murphy is happy to have worked with us:

“We couldn’t be happier with Alphaville, or the service that we get from Assanka. It was rather nice to see an IT project delilvered on time, to budget and to spec. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending their services”

Oops doesn’t really cover situations like that, does it. The brokerage responsible for the sale is having to buy back all the mis-sold shares at their market value (since no-one else is prepared to sell them at 1 yen), and suffer a resulting loss of around 27 billion yen (£126 million). All because someone put two numbers in the wrong boxes on a computer screen.

This could be considered a human error, and it’s worth remembering that even if there had been no computer involved at all, the broker might still have written the numbers down in the wrong boxes on an equivalent paper form. However, while a piece of paper is incapable of telling you when you’re writing what amounts to incomprehensible gibberish, a computer is certainly capable of taking a look at your request and checking that it falls within the boundaries of what should be considered rational. So really this is a software failure, in that it is certainly a failure of software to pick up on human mistakes.

The problem is, while computer software is now allowing us to process data and particularly financial transactions at a truly amazing speed, this also means that when technical errors occur, they tend to be large and far-reaching. As systems get ever more efficient and more accurate, we can process even more transactions per second; run trains faster and fly aircraft closer together, keep our cars on the road and even put people in space. We are putting more and more of our personal and financial safety in the hands of computers.

If that makes you shudder with fright and long for the days of manila folders stored in endless file rooms, it shouldn’t. When you’re in a lift on your way to the 50th floor of a skyscraper and the cable snaps, what do you want to rely on to brake your fall? A lift operator manually engaging an emergency brake, or a computer that can recognise the fault and react before you have even had the chance to regret having the chicken tikka for lunch.

Reliance on computer systems can’t be avoided. They’re just far too useful to be sidelined. What must be done instead is to make them absolutely bulletproof, and that’s not cheap.

The need for overwhelming testing and safety has been a staple of the nuclear industry for decades. Instead of being the ultimate source of unlimited clean, cheap power as originally promised, nuclear has become a source of energy no more cost effective than existing techniques. The industry recognised and accepted that the cost benefits of nuclear generation methods were almost entirely swallowed up by the cost of compliance with safety regulations.

Unfortunately many large computer systems are still constructed by the lowest bidder, and resilience is often one of the first things to suffer compromises. Considering the human and financial cost of computer failures should make it easy for firms to see the value in spending money in advance to prevent them. I would argue that any amount up to and including the cost of the worst conceivable failure is a valid investment in ensuring the resilience of a system. Certainly with hindsight Mizuho Securities in Japan would rather have paid the 27 billion yen earlier to develop a way of filtering incomprehensible trading orders, than pay the same amount now to buy back the mis-sold shares and suffer the glare of the media spotlight as well.

When you are considering a new system, calculate the cost of the worst possible failure of the software. Then consider what proportion of that you are willing to invest to prevent the failure from occurring. The system may end up being not as profitable as you’d like, but on the other hand, it may be considerably more profitable, depending on whether the disaster has happened yet.