Name: The Reality of Modernizing Investment Operations
Uploaded: 2025-09-16T16:18:21.044Z
Duration: 57 min 28 s
Description: The Reality of Modernizing Investment Operations

Transcript for "The Reality of Modernizing Investment Operations": Alright. Welcome, everybody. We have, we have a number of folks that have joined. We're gonna, get started. And, so welcome. Welcome to our webinar on trends in AI. Wait. Wait. Wait. No. That's exactly what this webinar isn't. We wanna be a little different than some of the other webinars that you are, have been attending. We'll we'll touch on AI. Don't worry about it. But, today, we're gonna be discussing, modernization and ways, to challenge how organizations think of these transformation programs. Everyone in the investment management world is modernizing in some capacity, as legacy systems, manual workarounds, data silos, and lack of resilience make it really tough to operate. But, executing transformations in the same manner and using the same mindset as in, like, the past several decades, it just seems to lead to minimal gains. So, you know, so we wanna change how people are thinking of it. If you're merely focusing on replacing a system with a newer version, you know, will that really yield a large benefit? You know, a lot of times, the answer is no. So how can we think differently about these programs and make a real impact? I am Chris Cassara. I'm a senior leader at Meradia. Our firm has been consulting with, with with and leading transformations for some of the largest players in the investment management industry for over thirty years. And we have a deep expertise across all of the required subject domains, you know, accounting, performance, data. My expertise is in trading and investment operations, but I've also executed my fair share of transformations in the data and performance measurement space. I'm here with colleague of mine, Kirk Littleton, someone who I I've had the pleasure of working with, for a long time now. And I'll, allow him to introduce himself, and then we'll, we'll get going. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Chris, it's a pleasure to join you here today and share our views on transformation. As Chris said, we've worked together a lot over the years, so I think we're pretty well aligned on on some of these concepts, but we'll see. I'm Kirk Littleton. I've been, helping asset managers and service providers for better part of forty one years. So I hate to admit that that length of time, but sometimes people think I'm gonna talk about mainframe and cobalt programming and things like that, but I I assure you I'm not. I'm I'm definitely more progressive in my thinking there. And, hopefully, between Chris and I, we can help shape your thinking about what's truly transformational and what's just another project. So back to you, Chris. Alright. I have been seeing some LinkedIn, content around mainframe stuff. So at least if I need to ask questions, we'll we'll do that offline. So at Meradia, we use the concept of having a clearly defined North Star in our engagements and in how we operate as a firm. Now I am not a sailor, far from it, but our founder and CEO, Scott Wrobransky, is, and the concept can be powerful. So when, when a clear North Star is present, teams can use that as a guiding principle to drive their efforts, and make sure that decisions and actions they're taking are all toward that end goal. So today, we're gonna chat on rethinking transformations, how the current mindset is a significant barrier to progress, and how we can apply the North Star North Star concept, to transformations in a in a bolder way. Few administrative things. We will be pulling the audience, as we get into each section. We have three sections, so be prepared. Be ready to, to participate, and we'll we are gonna save time for q and a. So if you have questions, feel free to drop them in the chat. We have a couple of, fantastic moderators who are gonna be moderating the flow of info. And then lastly, if you, for those if if, obviously, if you're missing this, right, you'll you'll get a a link to the recording after the fact. So let's, let's dive in. So section one is gonna we're gonna talk about, like, why replicating legacy models with new tech doesn't necessarily work. So that leads to our first poll question. We wanna get a sense for you guys, you know, what you're experiencing from within your firms. So I think while we get those results going, the mindset is something mindset of these transformations is is, something that I continue to harp on and and see that it needs to change, and it's not changing in today's marketplace. I think, you know, as people go into these projects, they tend to think small. They tend to be focused. Right? And what that does is it is it continues the mindset of just kinda getting through your your daily work and and executing tasks that are valuable but maybe small in nature. So I think that's the, you know, that's what we want to expand on and let people think bigger. Okay. So modernization mindset today is incremental fixes to pain points, and and that makes a lot of sense. I think what we, I think in any transformation journey needs to start with or should start with, fixing pain points and getting a better foundation. So when you really go into a large program, you're in better shape. But it that's, it's interesting that you guys are confirming that. Okay. We can take that poll down, please. Alright. So, Kirk, I know that when we've spoken in the past, right, we we think of of of things that people call transformational, but in our opinion, may not be. So I was wondering if you could start us off with some some examples of what truly is transformational, what we're talking about today. Yeah. I'll do my best. So so first of all, I do wanna, agree with your North Star strategy or approach there, Chris. I think that's really important. So many of the projects that we see and I've seen throughout my career are really focused on one thing and not so much on what what's our three to five to ten year strategy look like. But we're starting to see that more, and I'm gonna talk about two or three tenants I think are really important in that, in that North Star strategy that you you may wanna develop. But let me lay some foundation first. So, throughout my career, I've seen, like like, record keeping systems evolve to support new asset classes. So they initially back, what, two, three decades ago, everything was stocks and bonds and then then we sold derivatives, you know, things around, you know, swaps and futures and options and those kind of things. And these foundational systems that were built decades ago were pretty easy to adapt for those types of asset classes. It wasn't always elegant, but we could get swaps and futures and options into a stock and bond system and even some of the complex fixed income securities. However, in recent years, we've seen a lot of proliferation of alternative assets, private markets, however you like to think of those. I'll refer to them as alternatives for the purposes of this webinar. But, you know, what we've seen is, you know, private equity and complex credit instruments, real estate infrastructure, crypto, digital assets, these things are are much more complicated than just, you know, adding some new flavor of a bond or new flavor of a stock. So as a result, a lot of other applications were built, and I won't name them. You all know who they are. But in the end, service providers, asset managers, they end up with four, five, six, or seven platforms for all of their asset classes. You've gotta get away from that. Like, if you're really gonna sort of bend the cost curve on the operations, you're you're gonna have to figure out a way to get those onto a common platform. And you're gonna you know, you see what's what's happening with the alternatives. We're we're going back to things like closed end funds and and putting, alternative investments into interval funds and tenor offer funds, ETFs, DDCs. These products are all coming back in in favor because they can can they can hold these alternative assets. You can see it going the other way. You see the private equity firms offering evergreen funds, which, you know, behave like a mutual fund. So this alt trace is is is well underway. It's happening, and we all have to adapt to to to make things better operationally. So I think two things, two tenants for your North Star strategy should be two things. One, consolidate your record keeping. Find a technology, maybe one or two, whatever you can get down to, to modernize the way that you operate all all of your different asset classes. And then the second one would be to move to a multiple book platform. So we're gonna get into it later. We're gonna talk more about what I've or ABOR, PBOAR, all the different bores that people talk about. But I think it's really important to think about those two things. How how do I not have six or seven different, accounting systems, and how do I not do the accounting for the same portfolio three or four times? So I'll I'll pause there for now, but I'll come back to that concept, a later part of the webinar. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I think that's, you know, one of the things, like, we're we'll we'll end up talking about how you really need to phase these these programs out and how maybe big bang transformations are are problematic. But if you have, making up numbers, but if you have eight accounting systems and you ultimately want to get down to two, that doesn't mean you necessarily have to go from eight to two immediately. There might be a bit of a of a staging process to get there, but as long as you have that end goal in mind, right, you're getting towards the, you know, you're moving towards that end goal in a in a stage way. So I I think, when we think of AI as a technology, right, it is supposed to be transformational. But a lot of the initiatives that clients are are working through are, are valuable, but not necessarily transformational. Right? If you're using AI to reprove your your reconciliation function, yeah, that's it's a great use of the technology, and you'll get some value out of that. But is it really transformational? Probably not. Right? I think transformational thinking is on reconciliation is how can you almost eliminate it. Right? You'll never be able to eliminate it all the way. But one of the things to to con to think about is, you know, how can you, limit the amount of reconciliations that you're doing natively? And I think a lot of things that you've talked about point to that. I guess, you know, there are some specific areas that firms should consider starting with beyond, you know, beyond the, I guess, the big picture items, maybe on a on a on a small scale to to set their foundation, properly? Is that back to me? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. That that's back to you. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. That's fine. Yeah. So yeah. I agree with you. Like, when when you talk about, like, chat bots and things like that, that's fun. It it's cute. It makes a nice dump demo gimmick, but it's not really gonna change the the operating model at your firm. Same thing with on the reconciliation. To your point, how do we avoid doing reconciliations or at least limit them? Right? So let's go back historically for a moment and just think about how the the front and middle office work in most of these asset managers. So the the front office obviously has an OMS trading system. Again, you all know the names of the the players in that space, so I won't share that. But separate from that, there's been, you know, IVORS operating either at the service provider or at the asset manager themselves. And what they're doing there is taking the execute allocated trades, enriching them, creating more, you know, cash and positions, and then flowing that back into the OMS. So you heard terms over the years like start of day files and SOD and wipe and load and these are these are terms I hope we can retire on this webinar today because there's no need for them. I mean, there we now have technologies like APIs and Kafka buses and even m q series. Anything that's message based, that's the way we should be communicating between our front and middle and back office. No. You know, get get away from the file based stuff. It just adds latency to the process and and doesn't help anybody. So I I think that's the first thing. The other thing is, like, in addition to the IVOR, think about this for a moment. Every investment portfolio is is accounted for at least two or three times, maybe four in some cases. So in the case of a mutual fund, you have an IVR for the asset manager doing all the stuff we just talked about. The fund administrators use running an IVR to calculate NAVs and do, you know, financial reporting. And then there's a custody book that's keeping track of the assets and where they're located and settlements and so forth. So that's three times. You're doing the accounting three times. You have three different operating teams, three different market data feeds, pricing, corporate actions, you're running that all three times. And then at the end, you get to reconcile all three. So if you if you move to a, one of my tenants moved to a multiple book platform, you can do that that work once. You can have one operating team building different books curated for different purposes. So the IBOR book probably won't have a general ledger, won't have any navs, it'll just be real time rich cash positions, tax slots, all the data that the front office needs. The ABOR will be configured to have a general ledger to calculate NAVs and so forth. And then the custody book will ignore it more about settlements and things like that. So that's just one of the one idea of how we can, you know, stop reconciling things, you know, three or four times across different platforms and then really streamline your, you know, front, middle, back office operations. What that all leads to, which is another topic we're gonna talk about in a moment, is how do, asset managers and their service providers change the way they interact. Right? So we've had outsourcing, we've had co sourcing, you know, lots of different terms are used between those two entities. But in the end, the interaction between the two of them should be on a common platform. One one looking at a book that's relevant for what the work that they're doing and the other books are relevant for the work that they're doing. So that I think that's a a really important thing to talk about is is how how do we get to a different operating model between service providers and and and asset managers because these relationships are here to stay. Perfect. Yeah. We'll we'll talk about co sourcing in our in our last section, but I think what you're what you just said leads us right into sort of section two, which is sort of the practical approaches to integration. And, you know, like, we're shifting our focus to integration, reducing replication, consolidating ABOR and IBOR. We'll put up our second poll question now to get a little feedback. But I I think one of the big trends that we're seeing, in the marketplace, right, is is how some of some business lines are converging. In addition to just having a need to maybe consolidate the ABOR, ABOR, part of the bit part of the the business onto one book or one one platform. You have a lot of firms now that where wealth is now converging in with the institutional side of the institutional side of the business. And it's it's creating, I guess, a what I would say is a possible dynamic, right, where you can maybe think differently on how to, bring those business lines together as part of a of a of a large transformation. Before we go there, let's see. The biggest barrier your firm faces in reducing duplication, we have lots of data silos and then cultural and organizational resistance. I think though both of those are, are pretty interesting. I'm glad to to see the the answers kinda clustered in in that in those two because those I think those definitely have, you know, provide the most resistance, to good transformation. So as we, as we let's dive dive into that that wealth and, institutional converging. Right? I think orgs always have thought of these business units as completely separate, right, where that's separate systems, separate operations. You know, are there but are there ways? Right? Are there ways to consider applications that can service multiple business lines? Can we merge systems, operations, teams, and really get a benefit of IT and, from an IT and operations perspective in the long term? Now all the systems and the, you know, the way that groups operate may not be perfect, may not just be able to have you achieve that Nirvana state, but thinking about it that way, one solution for the firm will definitely help in, you know, triggering consolidate consolidation of ideas. I know that, Kirk, in in the marketplace, you're seeing that convergence. I know you wanna add some add some color to, to that trend. Yeah. Sure. So, you know, I follow the money. So when I watch the big, service providers and and and the firms, you know, I'll just name these two. Aladdin, for example, has a very strong wealth presence as does H Street. You've seen news in the market recently around that. That's the you know, there's a big wealth transfer, right, as we all know, somewhere between 85 and, you know, a $100,000,000,000,000 is moving to the next generation and and everyone's chasing that money. So that platform is gonna become more and more prevalent, you know, and and more important to big firms. They're gonna have to expand their their institutional business more into wealth than many already have, But what we're seeing is the wealth accounts are now owning the same back to the democratization of alternatives. Wealth portfolios now hold lots of different types of alternative assets. And if you think that problem is is difficult in the institutional space, it's really difficult in the wealth space because the wealth space is the distribution is everywhere from private banks to to, wealth platforms, to camps, to, you know, independent RIAs and warehouses. There's a lot of different ways to distribute wealth wealth asset servicing and I think what we're seeing is this this convergence between what institutions want and what wealth managers want. So for example, wealth has been very good about, you know, client portals and client interactions, direct indexing type of of of products, and that's that's making its way into the institutional side as well, whether it's, you know, personalization around ESG and and things like that. So to your point, Chris, I mean, thinking about transformation at a super high level, which would be a big asset manager has a wealth division, they have an institutional division, how do we bring those two together? How do are are there things that we could are there technologies or operations that we could share between those two different entities, which typically have been very siloed? They don't even talk to one another. They're just very different. So anyway, I I think there are opportunities when you think about that North Star of transformations that maybe you could, leverage some of the operations and technologies across multiple domains. Yeah. And like I was saying earlier, I think even though, you know, leveraging systems across those domains may not be perfect, and you may have specialized, you know, specialized groups or functions that, that need to remain and need to remain separate, maybe for one of those business units. But I think going through that exercise to to analyze where you can, potentially bring groups together, you know, is is a really valuable one. One part of this, I think, is is the the need for executive leadership and progressive leadership, someone that can or someone or a team that can think five to ten years out and really put a vision together of where they want the business to go. Because without that, right, it's gonna be impossible to break down, you know, decades of thinking of of of these different business units in, in silos. In in my I would say over the last ten years, like, as we've gone through a number or as I've been involved in a number of, transformations, I've only seen one instance where that vision was, was in place. The rest of the, the rest of the time, it was very you know, every all the efforts were very focused, even when we, when we see, you know, an RFP come across or something like that. Right? They're very tact they they all they all feel tactical in nature. And when although you you sometimes have a chance to ask questions, and get a bigger picture view of maybe what the firm is thinking, it's rare that they they, you know, that the firm comes back with something that is, of value. I know that you you probably see a lot of that similar behavior in in RFPs too in terms of a lack of a vision. Yeah. I mean, obviously, for years that that worked. Right? Because there were there were no technologies that enable people to do some of the things I just talked about, having having multiple books and having it's all on anyone's common platform. They just weren't designed to do that. So a tactical thing to replace one I bor for another, one a bor for another, you know, that that that was pretty commonplace. We saw it, you know, for decades. Right? I just don't think that's the direction of travel going forward. I I really don't think someone's gonna swap one performance engine for another when it does the same thing in the same format, same technology. It just doesn't it's it's not relevant. So I think it's going to be, more of an evolution than a revolution to get to a a future state, but and and you're gonna see those kind of tactical things. But I think every one of those projects should be pointing to a North Star. Yeah. For example, is this technology that I'm looking at, is it cloud based? Is it gonna integrate with, you know, my other applications through APIs, or am I still gonna be left with a file based kind of solution, something like that? Can I consolidate multiple legacy platforms into one common platform over time? Like you said earlier, Chris, you're not gonna do it overnight. If you have six different, accounting systems or record keeping systems, maybe you replace two of them with step one with an eye towards, you know, the future. Like, you know, just you're not gonna do a big bang transformational change like that, but you could at least select technologies and service providers for that matter that get you to that North Star. So you you I just think you have to think of it, strategically, but act more tactically. Does that that sound right to you? Yeah. No. I I actually, that might be a t shirt. We should see. We get get those printed up. I like that, that idea. And I say you're raising a point too with the the systems of today, right, where some of them are like, there there are more that cover a broader, breadth, you know, of of functionality now, and that is gonna continue to improve. Right? That's gonna continue to get better coverage. And I think that's another thing to consider is while you're you may be looking at systems that have, a function, you know, functionality as it is today, there is the, there is the opportunity to influence the, the product as it goes down down the road and to get it closer to your ultimate vision of the North Star. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I think, I think one of the things that like I was saying earlier, right, one of the things that organizations are gonna struggle with is having that strong leadership, having leadership that is around for the long term and committed to these types of programs. But if they set a big enough vision, you know, they can you know, there can really be some value to the organization in the long term. So I think we're gonna we'll transition now into our last topic, which is really about taking a phased approach after establishing an aspirational North Star. So we're going to, so we'll get our last poll, up on the screen. And if I you know, definitely, if you go to the polls tab, it should pop up, I think, on the bottom part of your screen and and submit. Get involved. We wanna see how many, how many attendees we can get in for this last, for this last poll. So how do you get unstuck and push forward? Right? To find the North Star, think aspirationally. Go go places where your your mind is not allowed to go on a daily basis. Right? And really think of something that is, right, that is revolutionary. Alright. So alright. Let's see. What is the most realistic first step towards your North Star? Accounting engine consolidation, reference data centralization, broader operating. Okay. So this this is these are interesting angles. It's good to see these spread across three of the the answers. I like that. I think the the idea of centralizing by function may be a first step after you you work backwards from your North Star. This is great input. Thank you. So once you have your your North Star in place and yeah. Then you're gonna wanna work backwards from there. And I think like what like, we just we just saw, do you start with centralizing functions? Do you start with consolidating systems? Or do you do you, you know, really start thinking about, about the transformation from an operational perspective. But I I think the wherever you start, right, one of the most important things is to make sure that you're changing the mindset of the organization. Your transformation. Right? If you start with a with an aspirational North Star, your transformation is going to be a long process. It's gonna be a process that is going to need a lot of small wins. And in order to to be able to put something like that in action, you have to change how people think. You know, do some organizational self reflection, identify the strengths where where you're really strong and map out how to use those as part of the transformation. Because there might be some things that are that you wanna keep separate from from the transformation and just integrate. Right? So if you have a super customer service function and platform and customers are just thrilled with how you service them, then keep that. Right? Keep that group separate from the transformation. Just make sure they're, you know, you're integrating that into your broader transformation. Now I think as I kind of always talk about, you know, a process, you need small wins, you need to have people think that way. It goes against what we've what we have typically seen us. I'll say typically seen over the last fifteen years in terms of transformations and how it was more of a big bang approach. Now we've been we've been involved in in a few of those. So, Kirk, you know, maybe if we go through some of the pitfalls and some of the the history of some of these big bank transformations and maybe why, you know, some of them aren't, haven't worked or were really, painful. Well, I think sometimes these projects were reactionary. Right? So if a result of having five or six or seven different account systems, someone said, we need a data warehouse. Let's go get, like, you know, name the names. There are lots of data warehouses over the last few decades. And that iteration continues. Even today, when, you know, we went from data warehouse to data hub to data stores to data lakes to now we have iceberg and snowflake. And so there's always going to be those kind of projects. Unfortunately, you know as well that I do, Chris, they don't they never end. Like, the data management project just starts and and goes on forever. Right? And it and it doesn't improve thing. Yes. It does. But but I think that we're so set in our ways. To your point, you gotta get out of your comfort zone and quit thinking about the way we've always done it. Right? It's one of the most dangerous things in business to say, well, we always done it that way. We always just look for the most painful piece of our ecosystem and went out and replaced it outside of in a vacuum, outside of the scope of something larger. So back to your point about how do you make this kind of transformational approach and North Star approach work, executive leadership sponsorship has to happen. Someone at the very top says, look, from the next five or ten years, we don't do anything unless it aligns with with this approach. Right? And if you don't have that kind of leadership, people will go off and do their own thing. They wanna impress their boss, they wanna build a little chat box, and look at look what I've built, you know, look, I can ask for the top 10 holdings in my portfolio. I could have run the report and do that too. Right? So just you have to be, you know, aware of what what the project what the strategy is and then work towards that. And and you have to figure out what pieces need to go first and make sure you don't just swap that out for another piece that looks just like it. You know, we all know what that that project looks like. Yes. You'll probably get there and you'll probably get marginal improvements over where you were before, but you're not gonna change the cost curve. You're not gonna improve the alpha the front office by just swapping out one legacy thing for another. So there those are the pitfalls to me as you you can't allow different divisions just to somehow find a budget and go out and replace something that doesn't align with where you're where you're headed as an organization. Great points. Great points. I think a a lot of those, big bank transformations are also pure outsourcing, as opposed to co sourcing. And and in today's marketplace, we're seeing more, of a trend toward co sourcing, which is kinda changing how or needs that requires a change to how organizations think of of their interactions with service providers and and and vendors and platforms. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in in this co sourcing spot and also some of the things that, you know, we we should think of, or organizations need to think of differently, you know, along, you know, maybe how they've treated SLAs and SLOs in the past. No. I think that's really important too. So as part of your North Star strategy, you do have to take into account service providers that you're dealing with and who you wanna deal with. Right? I mean, there's there's obviously the the need to diversify all the big asset managers like to spread their custody around, whether they're on accounting or around or other services and things like that. But but I think what I'm seeing change is historically asset managers said, well, whatever they do over at, you know, x y z bank is up to them as long as I have a service level agreement. If they wanna use an Abacus to do my fund accounting, that's fine. I don't I don't get it. That's not happening any longer. People really understand asset managers and they understand that technology matters and they can't allow their, service providers to run on old tech. They really can't. So they're influencing that now. They're they're getting involved. They're they're making investments in software companies and and trying to influence their providers to to modernize their platforms. We see that every day and there's resistance to change because those are big operations. They're they're built to service multiple clients, not just a single client. So when a single large asset manager goes to any service providers and said, this is what I need. It's like, well, that doesn't really fit my model. It's like, we'll make it fit because, you know, we're changing, you need to change. So I think you're gonna see more and more of that as the influence of the asset manager over the service provider, you know, asking specifically what performance engine are you using? How are you settling my trades? You know, how are how are you accounting for my assets? What tools are you using? I wanna know. And I wanna know if I can interact with it better. Is there a better way for me to communicate back and forth? And how how can we reduce the reconciliation cost? Those those kind of things really are gonna matter. The decompression or industry is not gonna change, and we we can't keep doing things the way we've done. We just they're not efficient and there's better ways driven by better technology available on both sides, both the asset manager and service provider. Getting that balance right is is is super important. And it's not the same for everyone. Some some firms wanna retain these functions, others wanna retain those functions. So it's never a one size fits all. You've you've seen that more than I have, Chris. Yeah. There's definitely, even though you have a a platform that may have a bunch of different pieces of functionality, the the way that clients come in, to take advantage of that is is is unique. And and, hopefully, that's due to them doing a bit of of thought and self reflection on what they do really well and, and what the vision looks like. Right? If I am my vision is that I am going to perform function you know, or for let's do performance measurement at the end, then, obviously, you're coming into a service provider or a platform and doing the rest of having them do the rest of their business. But that changes, you know, how you share data and and so forth. I think, you know, the other thing too is that there are more options to, consume the data or share data using just some of the more, you know, current technologies at database level. So that makes it more attractive for for folks to partner up, and it gives you more options to to be able to access data, at a different different pace and a different method than you're than you're used to. Last, I I think we've talked we've touched on it. Right? But, but we talk about influencing the road map of of a product or or partnering, right, with, investment managers partnering with a with a a vendor or a platform. And I think that's important to, to also have as part of your transformational road map. Right? Because the transformation you may chart a path that is, okay. Here's my here's the North Star. We work backwards. We have a five year plan. This is how we're going to attack it. But it's not going to be a straight line. Right? And things in technology, things in the, you know, in the business, whether that's regulatory things or just a different trend, that you have to that you choose to, to jump on, comes up. You know, it's it's going to require flexibility, and it requires partnership. Right? So that you can your needs evolve. Because like you you were saying, it's it's an evolution. Right? Your needs are going to evolve as part of the transformation, so you need to maintain a a level of flexibility. And also drill that into, your, your people. Right? That it's okay for us to change course, alter course slightly, or maybe even make a make a a strong course correction if needed as we get through this, you know, this whole transformation, journey. I think when we if we wanna bring all this, let's kinda bring everything together. If we we talk about setting a North Star, thinking aspirationally, coming up with a grand vision, and then working backwards into small, winnable chunks. Right? So we can we can start the program and get some small wins and build momentum and show, you know, a return on investment, internally. As I look to break down I mean, it's great to have a North Star. It's great to have a mission statement at a at a company, but that's you know, a few sentences is not going to be enough. Right? So I think we you know, breaking that down further, you know, maybe there you you met you had mentioned, in one of our other conversations that there are some key tenants that we really should, put in place or consider. I don't know if you if you, had a few of those handy as part of that sort of next level down to support the North Star. Yeah. I think, again, you're any any strategy like that has to include your technology and what's that look like, your service providers, what does their technology look like. So understanding what your new SLOs and SLAs are gonna look like. They're gonna be different. Right? If if if in today's world, we go back to my, wipe and load. I'm sending trades over to you as a service provider. You're doing an I bor and an a bor, and you're sending data back to me in a file, and I'm taking that file and loading it into my order management system. That's one service level. Now all of a sudden, I'm actually coming in as a serve as an asset manager to your platform, as a service provider and getting the data myself. That's a very different model. Like, I'm doing APIs, I'm using dashboards, I'm I'm interacting with you in a way I've never interacted with you before. All your SLAs have to change. So when you start to think about the tenants of your of your North Star strategy, it's like, what tech am I gonna use? What tech is my service provider gonna use? How am I gonna interact with it too? How does it impact my my daily service levels. You know, it's it's just a whole different way of thinking about how how you're gonna do business. Right? And and as I said before, we can't keep doing it the way we're doing it. We we have to, think, in a broader way. Yeah. That makes that it makes a lot of sense. I think the yeah. You'll you'll have to have key tenants around, functions and technology principles, as well as mindset as well as mindset principles to just keep reinforcing, flexibility, forward thinking, and, and just making sure that people understand that the transformation journey means that their, that their work will change, but that is a good thing. Right? So we're not you're not just thinking and functioning in the same way that you have been in the past. As I break as I look sort of, I guess, the last two two, runs a ladder, so to speak, for that framework is, you know, for me would be, start with a with a list of systems that are eligible for replacement. Right? And, and then that all of those, I guess, those first four things would then lead into, you know, where do you start. Right? So then you can you can really pick, a couple of valuable places to start the transformation that, you know, is going to show that progress and generate that positive momentum in the, in the organization. So I think we are, we're almost we're almost done, right, with that with our part. But we wanna we wanna make sure that we've got we're gonna we're leaving time for questions, but we're wanna make sure we have some questions. Don't be shy. Ask you know, be sure to submit some questions, and, we'll get to them shortly. I think one of the things that we've been, thinking about from a Vanguard and and Meradia perspective is is doing almost like these these brainstorm sessions, you know, if people are interested. Right? Take a take a a little time to help folks get unstuck and start that process. So it's it's something that we're, we're we're open to and we're we're kicking around how to best do that. But, it might be something that, could be valuable to to folks out there. So I wanna thank everybody for their time. We're gonna we'll officially go into q and a now. We'll, and see where see what you folks have, questions you have drummed up. Well, I'm not seeing any. We have a shy group today. Okay. So here's and this here's, here's a good one, I I guess. And this will be it is an interesting one to think of, and something that is difficult. So how do you convince leadership to invest when the ROI isn't immediate? It's a good one. Yeah. That is a good one. You wanna say it? Well, I spend most of my life trying to convince leadership to make big changes. It it's it's hard because there there's so many other priorities they're thinking about. It it's, you know, potentially, you're you're talking to someone who's late in their career. Last thing they wanna do is take on some big hairy project. So, you do have to kinda think about it from a cost perspective. How how are you gonna really save cost? And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of big service providers and asset managers don't even have a good handle on that cost. They don't know what it is and kinda don't wanna know because it's a big number. Right? So, you know, part of the North Star strategy may be, like, doing some cost analysis to say, what does it really cost us to run all these different platforms, all this operation, all this reconciliation? It's it's expensive to do. So, I think the one the one way you could get to them is with real numbers, real, you know, custom numbers. And it and it might be that those, you know, that ROI you have to reset an expectation of the ROI in that. This is a longer term ROI. And this goes back to having the that leadership that can think in in the longer term, and it it's not it's not gonna be an easy thing to convince folks who and it'll be borderline, impossible to convince someone who isn't thinking long term. So I think you have to make sure you have to know that you're going that you've got the right, you know, the right leadership that would embrace the the transformation. And, you know, even though there may not be an ROI that you can that you can point to, return within, you know, within a six month period. You know, perhaps it's something that's more soft and more beneficial to, to the organization in the longer term. Alright. We got a we got a question I'm not really following, so I'm not I'm not I'm gonna avoid that one right now. It's a long one. I think one, when, when people think of, I guess, functions to to centralize as part of a as part of a North Star strategy. Have we have you seen any, I guess, methodologies where centralizing a particular function has been a a good place to really start the the conversation. And, Kirk, that can be anything from, you know, I guess, maybe if we think of reference data, accounting, performance, or even just a, some sort of an operations. Have you have you seen anywhere, you know, one has worked better than the other or is a better place to start? Well, I think reference data and market data, you know, whether it's SecMaster or prices and corporate actions, that's been centralized pretty effectively across most organizations who embark on that. Right? And some people wanna be decentralized, but the ones that most are centralized, and that's pretty safe place to start. I think accounting is an interesting one though. They're comfortable running four or five different accounting systems today. They they do firms do it and they're like, it's fine. But bit back to our com comments earlier about the convergence of, you know, the alternatives coming into the into play, I talk to service providers and they actually say these words to me. We get a new client and I don't know which platform to onboard them to. Because it looks a little bit like this, but it looks a little bit like that. It's kind of a hedge fund, but it has this other feature that looks more like a mutual fund. So they literally don't know what platform to put them on. And then they look across that client's book of business and say, well, some of their stuff should go over to platform a and some should go to platform b. Now they've got their assets spread around different systems. So it's it's centralizing a function is interesting, but when that function has five or six different engines to do it, you didn't really centralize it. You just centralized the the people who are doing it, they didn't have to know which system to plug into. Right? Mhmm. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all we gotta think about. True. True. Yeah. It's a it's a good it's, it's interesting problem that you you just described, then how to necessarily how to to think about it. Alright. I'm not seeing any other questions come across. So we are going to, thank everybody for attending, and feel free to, reach out if you guys have you know, maybe some of you were a little shy, and have some questions that pop up out, you know, and you wanna ask us separately. Again, you're welcome to reach out to me via LinkedIn, and I'm sure Kirk the same. And, I just say, we thank you for your time today and, and participation in the polls as well. I appreciate your time as well. And hopefully, someone will call you, Chris, and ask for a North Star strategy program. We know we've accomplished something if they do. Yes. That's very true. Very good point. Hopefully, this this did resonate with them, with with the audience, though. Awesome. Alright. Thanks so much. Thanks, everyone.