AFTAs 2018: Best IT Team—Charles Schwab Investment Management

Charles Schwab Investment Management’s (CSIM’s) Investments Technology team wins this year’s best IT team category at the AFTAs, thanks to its development of a unified platform that reduced the need for the firm’s portfolio managers to oscillate between SAGE, the firm’s Strategic, Analytics, Generation and Execution platform, and BlackRock’s iconic risk analytics, portfolio management and trading platform, Aladdin.
As the industry eliminates fees across passive products, CSIM has had to handle increasing volumes while reducing operating costs in order to maintain profitable product fee structures. Increasing portfolio manager productivity was therefore critical, especially in fixed income, where available inventory typically dries up within three hours of the market open. Portfolio managers need actionable intelligence to make informed investment decisions and realize efficiency gains when dealers present inventory. It therefore became imperative to eliminate the need for portfolio managers to continually switch between SAGE and Aladdin. The Investments Technology team of 15 supported 83 users—21 equity portfolio managers, nine equity research analysts, six traders, 18 fixed-income portfolio managers, 18 credit research analysts, five investment research users and six oversight personnel—and prototyped a unified platform supporting both SAGE and Aladdin, resulting in BlackRock’s OpenAladdin offering. The Investments Technology team and BlackRock created a combined development team to develop OpenAladdin, the first iteration of which allowed SAGE to evaluate over 800 constraints across 150 issuers in minutes, enabling fixed-income portfolio managers to make more judicious investment decisions in massively reduced timeframes. The total AUM of CSIM’s core products grew 17 percent between December 2017 and August 2018 without any need for a corresponding increase in portfolio management staff. “We attribute our success to strong alignment between our technology and portfolio management teams,” says Manish Ghayalod, managing director, head of Investments Technology at CSIM. “We needed to ensure the portfolio management team had the appropriate scale and efficiency to support a rapidly growing asset base, so we simplified and integrated our technology environment, refined the end-to-end investment workflow, and improved collaboration within the team.”
Ghayalod says the integration needed to happen at the API level so CSIM could leverage the computational power of Aladdin to quickly evaluate issuer constraints across the investment universe. “As BlackRock’s flagship partner, we pioneered Aladdin’s OpenAladdin framework to develop the necessary efficiency to maintain a competitive advantage,” he explains. “It was critical for SAGE and Aladdin to function as a unified solution, where SAGE supports the custom aspects of the investment process and Aladdin supports the standard aspects.”
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (point 2.4), printing is limited to a single copy.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (clause 2.4), an Authorised User may only make one copy of the materials for their own personal use. You must also comply with the restrictions in clause 2.5.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Awards & Rankings
Witad Awards 2025: Legal/compliance professional of the year—Devi Shanmugham, Tradeweb
Devi Shanmugham, global head of compliance at Tradeweb, wins legal/compliance professional of the year in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Technology innovator of the year (end-user)—Ruchi Acharya Saraswat, RBC Capital Markets
Ruchi Acharya Saraswat, managing director, head of strategy and transformation, business and client services technology at RBC Capital Markets, wins technology innovator of the year (end-user) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Best company for diversity and inclusion (end-user)—BNP Paribas Portugal
BNP Paribas Portugal wins best company for diversity and inclusion (end-user) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Wellness/work-life balance award (end-user)—Sarah Mears, MUFG Investor Services
Sarah Mears, chief human resources officer at MUFG Investor Services, wins the wellness/work-life balance award (end-user) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Exchange professional of the year—Valerie Bannert-Thurner, Nasdaq
Valerie Bannert-Thurner, executive vice president and chief revenue officer of the financial technology division at Nasdaq, wins exchange professional of the year in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Rising star (vendor)—Hannah Sayson, S&P Global Marketplace
Hannah Sayson, lead product manager of the S&P Global Marketplace, wins rising star (vendor) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Data science professional of the year (vendor)—Kaja Zupanc, Duco
Kaja Zupanc, head of machine learning at Duco, wins data science professional of the year (vendor) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.
Witad Awards 2025: Vendor professional of the year (data and operations)—Pooja Padgavkar, SmartStream Technologies
Pooja Padgavkar, senior consultant at SmartStream Technologies, wins vendor professional of the year (data and operations) in the 2025 Women in Technology and Data Awards.