The Trade - Issue 49 Autumn 2016

Provider profiles
n The 2016 Execution Management System Survey

66 n THE TRADE n ISSUE 49 n AU TUMN 2016 n www.thetradenews.com
In 2015 Portware received insufficient responses to btain any formal inclusion in
the results of the Survey. This
year has seen a significant rise
in the number of responses,
though Portware still accounts
for less than 4% of all weighted
responses. There was a mix of
hedge funds and long-only firms
among respondents. Almost all
responses were from U.S. based
clients though the U.K. and Hong
Kong also featured. Portware is
different from many EMS vendors
score was marginally ahead of
the average across all Survey
participants and at a level that
suggests a generally very solid
level of customer satisfaction. In
two areas Portware scored at
above 6.0 (Very Good). These
were the Breadth of Connections
to different brokers as well as the
range of direct market access
connections. Given its approach
to the business it would be
expected that Portware should
score well in these areas.
Similarly, since it is a technology
rather than applications provider,
the lower scores (just below the
5.0 (Good) default level) for
Product Development are
expected. It is not clear the
extent to which Client Service is
seen as important by Portware
clients, perhaps less so than
among more traditional
providers. Even so the average
score here was among the lower
ratings for Portware, which is
something it may want to
investigate further, with one
client noting it as an area where
they would like to see an
improvement. Otherwise the
only minor concerns were a
desire for more TCA and
compliance capabilities, but that
is common across the industry.
Certainly a very solid debut in the
published Survey. n
in offering a more customisable
solution to meet the needs of
institutional asset managers. As
such having larger firms as
clients as well as more
sophisticated ones, is to be
expected. This different
approach does however
contribute to the nature of some
of the scores achieved.

Overall the results were positive, though with no comparable data from a year ago, the relative position over time is impossible to assess. The overall