Q&A with Limina: ‘Partnering with Qontigo underpins vision of having fully integrated investment management and trade execution workflows’

Last December, Qontigo partnered with Limina to integrate Axioma Analytics solutions into Limina's Investment Management System (IMS).

Limina IMS provides institutional asset managers, asset owners and hedge funds with a cloud-native, multi-asset, front-to-middle office platform that delivers services including portfolio and order management, pre- and post-trade compliance, and an Investment Book of Record (IBOR). The integration with Axioma Analytics will enable clients to access industry-leading factor models, risk management and performance attribution solutions natively within Limina's portfolio views and compliance workflows.

To find out more, we sat down with Kristoffer Fürst, Limina's CEO. Below is our exchange.

Kristoffer, please tell us a bit about Limina

"Limina is built for investment managers, by investment managers. Many of my colleagues, as well as myself, have a buy-side background. We were frustrated with the state of investment management systems and saw an opportunity to build something we wanted to have.

Hence, we created a front- to middle-office platform for mid-sized asset managers. Founded in 2014, it's an open platform designed for holistic workflows with the right balance of flexibility.

Finally, we've been cloud-native since our very beginnings, which gives us an edge as large parts of the industry are transitioning to the cloud now, and an advantage when it comes to integrating API-based Axioma."

What does integrating Axioma risk and analytics solutions bring to your offering?

"It allows us to offer a more comprehensive and seamlessly integrated view of risk and performance that is straightforward and easy to use. Until now, clients have had to go into two different systems to use a risk process, which created a fragmented situation. The ability to access the Axioma Analytics suite directly within Limina IMS will empower our clients to make better informed investment decisions, reduce operational risk and simplify workflows within a single platform."

How, in practice, do portfolio managers want to use a risk and analytics system?

"Front-office users want to go into the system to check analytics and risk before they trade. For example, let's say a manager has a sustainability fund with a carbon footprint restriction. Before they trade in a new security, they want to check whether that security impacts the carbon restriction or breaches any other risk requirement.

With Axioma Analytics, users can select as many exposures, sensitivities, stress tests and risk settings as they require. The partnership enables those figures to be integrated seamlessly into the pre-trade workflows."

Why did you choose Axioma Analytics for this partnership?

"Firstly, because Axioma Analytics' suite includes a best-in-class, recognized risk and performance attribution toolkit that offers the highest flexibility and variety in the market.

Secondly, because your open architecture and cloud-based technology perfectly fit Limina. Axioma Risk™ is a cloud system with modern web service APIs, which makes the integration faster and more robust for clients and users.

Through the partnership, we're not just integrating position data into a risk system that users then have to log in to separately. Instead, we're actually embedding the risk and analytics into the workflows and Limina's user interface. This is a much deeper integration. It would not be possible unless both systems were open.

And finally, an important advantage of Axioma is that it can incorporate and calculate new portfolio instruments intraday, rather than once a day or overnight."

Can you elaborate on that last point?

"The batch-based approach that is common to risk analysis allows the addition of new instruments usually every evening, runs the risk process overnight and produces the new risk profile in the morning. That's not really useful for managers who need to understand in real time what the impact would be when remodeling their portfolios. Providing an instant, real-time risk view of hypothetical portfolios is extremely important for a risk system to be usable in the front office. This was a key decision criterion, which Axioma Analytics suite excelled at."

How does the partnership tie into Limina's vision?

"Limina was founded due to frustrations with systems that did not talk to each other well. We felt the pains of unreliable connectivity and workflows that spanned multiple, unconnected systems. The Qontigo partnership is a critical step in achieving the vision of 'no more fragmented workflows.'

We are pleased to combine the two API-first, open platforms, resulting in fully integrated order and data management workflows, together with comprehensive portfolio risk analytics and exposures. And we are doing it with the best functionality to support clients' investment decisions and business development with minimal operational risk."

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