Waddell & Reed Live on Charles River Investment Management System

Charles River Development (Charles River), an award-winning provider of financial software and services to the global investment management community, today announced that Waddell & Reed Investment Management Company and its affiliates, which combined have $47.6 billion in assets under management, are live on the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) and Charles River’s Application Management solution. Over 60 Waddell & Reed users now benefit from enhanced decision support, streamlined trade order management, and real-time, pre-trade compliance monitoring on a single integrated platform. Waddell & Reed also leverages the broker-neutral Charles River Network and FIX (Financial Information eXchange) Administration for real-time global electronic trading via FIX. Waddell & Reed has seamless access to 50 of its preferred broke r-dealer destinations via the network, and plans to increase connectivity to 100 sell-side providers in the near future.

Phase One, delivered on-time and on-budget, is the initial stage of a three-phase project which is part of Waddell & Reed’s initiative to implement a centralized system to streamline workflows and gain significant efficiencies in portfolio management, trading and compliance monitoring. The implementation completes the Phase One rollout of Charles River IMS across Waddell & Reed’s four equity desks, including domestic and international securities, derivatives and foreign exchange (FX). During the next phase, Waddell & Reed will implement Charles River IMS across its money market desk, while Phase Three will focus on its fixed Income operations.

Waddell & Reed is using Charles River’s Application Management outsourced solution, based on clients’ unique needs. Waddell & Reed receives 24x7 application management and support, including alert notification, performance monitoring and tuning and user administration.

“As a fundamental investment management firm, we are continually focused on achieving long-term success,” said Larry Cipolla, Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for Waddell & Reed Investment Management Company and Ivy Investment Management Company. “Charles River allows our investment professionals to easily trade and monitor any security in real time – with greater confidence. Charles River’s services also provide day-to-day system monitoring, rendering ‘real’ savings over the cost of a full-time internal IT resource.”

The Charles River Network, which is fully integrated with Charles River IMS, directly connects Waddell & Reed’s traders to its sell-side brokers and other global trading venues – allowing them to handle larger trade volumes, gain new FIX capabilities across multiple asset classes and access algorithmic strategies of their choice and new liquidity destinations. Waddell & Reed subscribes to Charles River’s FIX Administration for proactive administration, monitoring and support of FIX software and connectivity.