In their effort to ensure assertive governance and time efficiency savings when reporting to the authorities like the FSA, asset management company Index Helsinki has chosen cloud portfolio management solution provider FA Solutions as its technology partner. Built as a new feature specifically tailored for Index Helsinki, FA Solutions developed a report that incorporates all the data required for local FSA reporting.

Index Varainhoito (Index Asset Management) is Finland's only asset management company specializing in index investing, creating core portfolios with index instruments, and using more complex instruments as a satellite. The company is staff-owned and operates 100% independently.

“As COVID-19 changed all traditional ways to run business, the company had to reorganize its everyday operations completely. All daily activities suddenly needed to run remotely without a single physical location and all functions needed to run, with daily checks to client and FSA reporting,” says Jukka Huuskonen, CEO at Index Helsinki.

Increasing reporting requirements from local supervisory authorities are often a big challenge. FA Solutions developed reporting tools tailored for Index Helsinki that incorporate all the data required for local FSA reporting.

“Different ways of creating investment portfolios can cause challenges for reporting platforms. However, with the very flexible FA platform, they were able to develop a new report specifically for us that means we can customize it to fit our own needs,” says Marjut Kaste, Administrative Director at Index Helsinki. “The ability to connect to other systems, such as custodian banks, enabled us to create a significant number of automated processes that improved efficiency markedly.”

Active investing is often seen as faster and more lucrative than index investing. However, an index investor can achieve the market return level for its investments with expenses deducted. Due to the efficiency of the investment market, active portfolio management won’t lead to better results than the market return - except rarely and by chance.

Additionally, active investing causes a lot of unnecessary expenses. Therefore, an active investor needs a considerable amount of luck to beat the returns gained by an index investor.

“The growth of alternative asset class use has had a big impact on all asset managers to implement proper and sophisticated portfolio management systems, in order to keep track of risks, returns, and the reporting of all asset types to all stakeholders including local FSAs,” said Hannes Helenius, Chairman of the Board at FA Solutions. “Furthermore, the new normal of working remotely emphasizes the IT infrastructure move to secure cloud solutions,” continued Helenius.

Index Helsinki’s need was a single cloud-based system that would enable them to work regardless of physical location and reducing the dependency of human work by automating processes as much as possible.

FA Solutions provides a cloud-based portfolio management platform for wealth managers that automates and centralizes operational processes and reporting into one easy-to-use system via multiple APIs. Without an automation system in place, back, front, and middle office staff need to manually complete routine tasks using legacy systems and tools such as Excel.

Founded in 1999, FA Solutions serves over 70 major banks, independent asset managers, and institutional investors in 15 different countries, such as Luminor Bank, Taaleri, CIGP, and Zurich Invest AG. The company currently has offices in Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Latvia.