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In July, our loan portfolio administration business, WSO,
reached a huge milestone: our services business broke through the
$500 billion AUM mark. In this Q&A, Elina Gokh, head of WSO,
discusses what reaching this milestone means for our business, our
clients and the industry.
Q1. Why is reaching 500 billion AUM such a big milestone
for WSO?
It's a fundamental milestone for the industry and in the growth
of the asset class, but reaching this point during the toughest
year to operate in is that much sweeter. For the business, it means
that our products, our data and our people provide an exceptional
and deeply rooted value to our clients and industry. Over the
years, we have been able to scale, reduce manual processes and
focus our investments in liquid and illiquid strategies by
leveraging our technology and market expertise. While we reflect
and take immense pride on what was accomplished, we must now embark
on a new journey and pivot to the new dimension of asset class
complexity, scalability requirements, transformative technology as
well as providing more complete solutions to the alternatives
market.
Q2. What does hitting this milestone mean for our
clients?
We launched WSO Services in 2001 with one client and $7 billion
in assets under management, identifying a critical need in the
industry and rallying to solve it. Today, our collaboration with
clients as partners is more important than ever, zeroing in on ways
to solve new challenges, enabling them to influence our roadmap and
investment initiatives. Our clients keep raising the bar for what
it takes to compete, whether that's recognizing how real-time
access to complex datasets is vital, or why connecting the
workflows from portfolio management to accounting and reporting is
paramount to our future. Our clients' success is directly measured
by our collective ability to influence industry transformations
together, supporting growth, diversification and scale.
Q3. What do the next 12 months hold for WSO
Services?
Industry transformation: With impending LIBOR reform, the next
12 months will hold a vital transition period where we'll be
guiding our clients and market through successful implementation of
new calculation methodologies, new terms that inform deal
structures and new processes that reduce the operational burden
associated with this change.
Technology evolution: We've been investing thoughtfully in our
product development and deployment transformations and now will
expect to directly translate this into the client experience. We
will be bringing new features to market on a more frequent basis -
quarterly and monthly. We are also expanding our integration
capabilities, moving away from batch processes and adopting
API-driven connectivity as well as event-based real-time
architecture, which will be a game-changer for clients. Our
transition to AWS for cloud infrastructure will also enable
critical scale.
Solutions experience: Clients will start to see some changes in
how we frame our product portfolio. We want to draw a much closer
alignment between our offerings, directly correlating to the market
segments that our clients operate in; whether they are buy-side or
sell-side institutions, service providers; investing in liquid or
illiquid strategies. We've recently launched our new, integrated
Private Debt Solution that enables credit managers and direct
lenders to streamline workflows and enhance performance. We will be
also exploring new opportunities, particularly focused on the
growing need for additional oversight and reconciliation.
Posted 29 September 2020 by Elina Gokh, Managing Director, Commercial Strategy and Head of WSO, IHS Markit
IHS Markit provides industry-leading data, software and technology platforms and managed services to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in financial markets. We help our customers better understand complicated markets, reduce risk, operate more efficiently and comply with financial regulation.