Cazenove Capital Management, the asset management business of Cazenove Group Ltd is moving its entire middle and back office to SimCorp Dimension as part of its restructuring into a separate entity, independent from the investment banking business of its sister company JP Morgan Cazenove.

“Our previous system, ACT Quasar, was very bespoked and was 20 years old, but it was also heavily reliant on the systems provided by our sister company JP Morgan Cazenove,” said Mike Neilson, chief operating officer of Cazenove Capital.

Cazenove Capital formally demerged its operations from JP Morgan Cazenove in December, but has an agreement that will permit shared systems for six months following the demerger.

In selecting the SimCorp system, the firm put a priority on straight-through processing and its modern architecture, Neilson said.

“It’s much more efficient and will give us competitive advantage. We used to have to re-key transactions to the settlement system, but now we are refining our STP criteria. As more brokers become familiar with our criteria our STP rates will go up.”

The first phase, which involved moving trade processing and back-office administration for retail and sub-advisory funds, has been completed, meaning 35 funds are now live. The retail and sub-advisory funds were chosen for the first stage of the shift so that the firm could test the STP capabilities. The funds in the first phase represent £3.8 billion under management. The second phase will include funds for charities, institutions and private clients, amounting to approximately £9.5 billion under management.

In total, SimCorp Dimension is replacing five systems, though ACT Quasar was the primary one. SimCorp is a Microsoft partner, and SimCorp Dimension runs on XP, according to SimCorp marketing manager John Mayr.

Other parts of the new system include a front end from Charles River that will help with pre-trade analysis and pre- and post-trade compliance. Cazenove Capital built the interface between the Charles River and SimCorp systems and the two have integrated well, Neilson said.

A feature that was particularly attractive about SimCorp Dimension was that it had one single database from which trades, accounting transactions, client reporting and performance measurement were all derived.

Moving forward, Cazenove Capital plans to develop a client reporting system that will be handled by SimCorp Dimension. Separately, the firm also plans to add a UK capital gains tax functionality, which can help with back-office administration and front-office modeling. Financial Software’s Cgix will serve as the capital gains engine.