Cohen & Company, a global alternative fixed-income asset manager with over $40 billion in assets under management, today announced the launch of Synergy, its proprietary next-generation CDO portfolio management system.
Designed by an internal team under the leadership of Chief Information Officer, Mark Tolani, the Synergy system has been built to serve as a highly scalable, multi-tier portfolio management system that will keep pace with Cohen & Company's growing assets under management, trading volumes and number of users accessing the system.
Cohen & Company's Synergy system has been designed to further enhance the firm's investment, surveillance, and investor reporting processes, sharpening the ability of the firm's CDO managers to focus on underlying credit analysis.
The system has been deployed to Cohen & Company's ABS CDO management unit, Strategos Capital Management. The firm also plans to roll out Synergy to its other CDO management units over time, greatly enhancing their ability to scale their portfolio management operations further as they grow.
The Synergy system is comprised of the following key features:
- Portfolio managers can view their positions for each CDO - as well as across CDOs - alongside security performance information that is automatically updated each night. An automated watchlist feature flags all securities that fail specified performance criteria.
- The system includes configurable views and a robust search capability. For example, a portfolio manager can quickly examine all exposures to a particular servicer, displaying for each such security the current loss and delinquency rates on the underlying pool.
- In addition to managing positions, the system allows portfolio managers to view data on securities across the entire market, over 150,000 securities. For example, portfolio managers can pull up all single-A rated RMBS or Home Equity securities with average FICO scores above 650 and a ratio of current credit enhancement to 60+ delinquencies greater than 2.0. The system searches the entire universe of securities and comes back with the results in a fraction of a second.
Chris Ricciardi, Chief Executive Officer of Cohen & Company, said, "Our significant investment of talent and financial resources in this leading-edge technology is part of our ongoing commitment to provide our investors and clients with superior service and superior returns based on best-in-class CDO portfolio management. With this proprietary system, our CDO managers can even more effectively serve our investors and clients by fully focusing on what they do best: Analyzing the creditworthiness of each investment. More broadly speaking, our investment in Synergy(TM) also reflects our commitment to grow and develop our technology platform in lockstep with the expansion of our CDO businesses."
Steve D'Agostino, Chief Technology Officer, said, "We are delighted with the successful launch of Synergy(TM). The team of five technologists and two product managers that created Synergy(TM) combines state of the art technology expertise with extensive CDO experience under one roof in order to design the most powerful, flexible product for efficient CDO portfolio management."