The fintech behemoth that is Confluence strengthened their offering last year with the acquisition of UK-based StatPro, with the bolt-on acting as a catalyst for the firm to assist asset managers with their operations from the front to the back office.
Their most recent acquisition, that of Fundpeak, a provider of secure fund portals and marketing tools such fund factsheets and websites, illustrates what the company’s chief operating officer Todd Moyer (pictured) describes as its ‘scalability’.
“As an industry we're looking for products that can truly scale. That's a key theme that you're going to hear more of as well. We build everything for scale and I do think that we are seeing more and more of that, especially as people have had to deal with the remote working environments, they want to know that their platforms can scale,” said Mr Moyer.
This deal with Fundpeak was the most recent in a flurry of activity for the firm, which also saw it win a mandate from one of the ‘world’s largest fund administrators’ (name confidential) involving the firm’s middle office solutions tasked with risk management and a deal with a large Swiss pension fund that again incorporates StatPro’s Delta software as a service (SaaS) product.
“I think where we are really focusing on meeting those needs is around that open architecture, enabling the growth of platforms, throughout the industry, and we feel can do that by bringing best of breed solutions. We don't plan to be everything,” Mr Moyer explained.
For global asset managers having to deal with the seemingly relentless amount of regulation coming their way, Confluence has long been one of the few ‘go-to’ firms to handle back office functions such as reporting. Mr Moyer said the company file in 30 different jurisdictions and its global footprint shows Confluence has offices in every major fund hub as well as those considered to be up and regions such as Vietnam.
“it's really the global operating model that I think differentiates ourselves [from competitors] because we have the ability to provide 24/7 support, the ability to build for scale for the global entities and just really to be able to serve as a global operating model that a lot of our clients are embracing,” Mr Moyer sums up.
Whereas some firms that also provide assistance to global asset and wealth managers, for instance UK-listed Alpha Financial Markets Consulting, had a troubling 2020 due to their need for client facing meetings, Confluence’s SaaS model and the fact it is privately held negated these problems. While the aforementioned Alpha Financial was concerned over dividend payments to its shareholders, Confluence, similarly to some of the privately held asset managers could concentrate on delivering service for its clients, not its shareholders.
