Backstop empowered Optima to meet and exceed client expectations through proactive tracking of deliverables, increased productivity through robust auditing capabilities, and enhanced collaboration among global team members to improve client service.
Backstop Mercer Workshop: The Most Important Investment a CIO Can Make
If you ask a CIO what their most important asset is, chances are, they will say it's "their people.” If that is the case, then the most important investment that a CIO can make is one that makes the most of their team’s time, creativity, and collaboration.
Is It Worth It?
An audacious, imperfect, and comprehensive attempt to answer, “What are the benefits of investment office modernization projects?”
2020 Year in Review
Productivity took on new meaning in 2020. We all had to find new ways of working, but that did not slow us down here at Backstop. We continue to innovate the technologies that help our clients get the most value out of every minute they spend working, from wherever they are.
Backstop Solutions and Mercer conducted a survey of more than 200 institutional investors
Backstop Solutions and Mercer conducted a survey of more than 200 institutional investors to explore the hypothesis that investment teams are spending time on tasks that don’t align with their high levels of education, skills and experience. Our goal was to under- stand how much time institutional investors were spending on core investment tasks versus other non-core tasks and to identify opportunities for improvement in daily work processes. Here’s what we learned:
SOME CIOs DON’T CARE ABOUT EFFICIENCY, BUT HERE’S WHY THEY SHOULD
Investment teams are composed of experienced experts in the field: professionals who are tasked with researching and discovering successful investment ideas.
Institutional investors spend a third of their time on tasks with no value to investment process
Institutional investors are spending 30 per cent of their time on tasks that do not add value to the investment process, including searching for documents on shared drives, and typing up handwritten notes from meetings.
How Investment Teams Waste Their Time
It would be better spent on due diligence, instead of meaningless scut work, say Backstop and Mercer.
2020 Institutional Investor Productivity Report
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic upended life as we know it, institutional investing was already a demanding field that attracted highly educated professionals to strategically allocate assets and deliver superior risk-adjusted returns for their members, annuitants, employees or organizations.
How Your Rms Can Unleash (Or Stifle) Your Investment Team’s Effectiveness
While there are commonalities between asset classes, each asset class also has a unique set of relevant data and criteria.
Conducting Due Diligence During a Pandemic
Mercer-Backstop alliance allows asset allocators to kick the tires on investments remotely.
The Institutional Investor’s Guide to Cryptocurrency
The allure of cryptocurrency for investing can be summed up in a few lines: it represents disruptive new application of blockchain technology, culminating in a fundamentally new kind of asset, and with it, the birth of a new investable asset class. Cryptocurrency is not a stock nor a bond. It is not a company with financial statements and cash flows. It is not a traditional commodity like gold or oil. It’s an asset entirely unto it’s own, where valuation continues to evolve, and with it the use cases, networks and macro narratives through which the ultimate value will be determined.
The 7 Questions Every Head Of Business Development Needs Answers To...pronto
As the head of business development, you have targets for net asset inflow. To meet these targets, you are called on every day to make decisions that will help you and your team optimize your win rate, your pipeline, and your time. Making the right decisions requires comprehensive, detailed, real-time data. This data must provide clear answers to seven questions that will help you maximize team efficiencies and identify team priorities.
This Is How Asset Managers Can Conquer the Security Portion of Allocator RFIs and DDQs
Here, we provide information on maturing your security posture and offer five guidelines to help you navigate the security section of RFIs and DDQs.
An Allocator’s Guide to Asking the Right Questions About Information Security in an RFI
Asset Allocators can avoid unnecessary risk in vendor selection by following four guidelines that strengthen and streamline their firm’s due diligence activities.
Ready, Set, Scramble: How COVID-19 Is Impacting Regulatory and Institutional Due Diligence
Listen to Josh Mika, Doug Rothschild, and Mitchee Chung discuss how allocators are adjusting their investment and operational due diligence practices to the pandemic.
Commentary: The avoidable risk CIOs are unknowingly introducing into their organizations
Many institutional investors are taking security more seriously and dedicating a portion of their requests for information or requests for pricing to questions about a potential vendor's security.
AI-CIO Article - A System to Help Asset Allocators Adapt to Remote Working
Learn how ERS Texas (alongside other asset owner clients) has managed to maintain business continuity in these uncertain times.
