SEI Novus 2022 Year in Review
From acquisition to awards: how SEI Novus transformed in 2022
New beginnings are fresh opportunities. The start of 2022 was more than just a transition from Q4 to Q1 for SEI Novus. On the heels of the Novus Partners acquisition, we introduced a rebrand, released a new product, and eagerly interacted with new colleagues. Reflecting on all the questions our team explored throughout the year—a Sir John Templeton comes to mind:
“The wise investor recognizes that success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.”
In the spirit of continuing the learning and growth process, we’re reflecting on this past year through the lens of our biggest questions for 2022.
How does SEI Novus fit into SEI?
We can sum it up in 18 words: SEI Novus introduces front-end analytics to SEI’s middle- and back-office capabilities for a true end-to-end, multi-asset class solution. Boom.
The SEI Novus technology is now the analytics engine for SEI’s Enhanced CIO offering, a one-of-a-kind solution that powers institutional investment teams. Enhanced CIO and Outsourced CIO bookend a continuum of solutions to serve institutional investors of any size and configuration, with a flexible suite of services, data management, and technology.
Joining forces makes it possible for SEI Novus technology to seamlessly connect investment teams across the back, middle, and front offices. The growing demand for a comprehensive solution in the marketplace has positioned SEI to attract new and bigger institutional asset owners over 2022.
During its first year as part of SEI, the SEI Novus technology has been recognized as an industry-leading solution. In December, SEI was named “Best Data & Technology Provider” at the CIO Innovation awards. Earlier in the year, SEI Novus won “Best Portfolio Management Vendor” at the Family Wealth Report Awards and “Best Multi-Asset Class Portfolio Management System” at the Private Asset Management Awards.
How can SEI Novus support ever-evolving institutional investor needs?
Shadow Accounting Data Operations Tool
As pioneers of Portfolio Intelligence, we know dirty data leads to flawed analytics. Our clients have shared with us their struggle to stay on top of their Investment Book of Record, and how this affects their ability to accurately analyze their portfolio.
Custodian data is notoriously late and inaccurate, and the shadow accounting workflows to clean up this dataset is tedious and highly manual. Our team developed a data operations tool, Ledger, that integrates directly with custodian providers to automate and streamline record reconciliation.
Ledger demonstrates our commitment to providing institutional investors with technological solutions that improve organizational operations. As mentioned previously, we can go further through Enhanced CIO and support automation for investment processing or provide full-fledged outsourcing of back-office operations.
Private Market Solutions
Over the last three years, a primary focus has been delivering the best private market offering for asset owners. To streamline the data management piece, we apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to process key information from GP provided documents.
Our private market offering now includes: performance, cashflow forecasting, liquidity analysis, exposure management, and portfolio company detail. Asset owners with illiquid investments can use Ledger to mitigate reporting delays through NAV estimates and with marketable proxies until NAVs are finalized.
Our top-performing white paper of 2022 dives into the challenges of balancing liquidity constraints in a private investment program.
Going to Market
Among the wins from this year, happily sit our expanded clientele. SEI Novus technology and our stellar client management team added several new clients this year, including a major public pension plan, top university endowments, enduring foundations, and one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
What themes are most relevant to the SEI Novus ecosystem?
Our blog and podcast serve as our own form of industry pulse. We’re sharing our top performing content themes from 2022.
Short Selling
Surprise, surprise! Turns out 2022 kept you interested in Short Seller Analysis; plus, you wanted to know What It Takes to Win on the short side. Our podcast listeners also liked listening to short specialist fund manager, Matt Earl, share his findings from the field (a true page turner of an episode).
Hedge Fund Findings
You wanted to know the TRUTH about hedge fund marketing, and we spilled the tea. While we were pouring, you learned how to tell a powerful story through deep dive analytics.
But you couldn’t stay away from the drama (and neither could we). We shared the gripping Tales from the Hedge Fund Graveyard, and you learned some lessons in survival. You also learned to embrace “Levity Over Gravity” from Val Zlatev of Analog Century.
Next Up for SEI Novus
We are excited for 2023. In 2022, the SEI Novus team navigated a new home, new teammates, and new capabilities. For 2023, we are ready to channel 100% of our energy towards the opportunity in front of us. Our opportunity centers on data, documents, data, processing, data, analytics, and more data!
Many asset owners spend too much time processing and collecting data from GP Communications. Others, not enough. Fact Sheets, Cash Flow Notices, Quarterly Financial Updates, Valuation Statements, and more for tens to hundreds of investments are a cost of investing in privates. Further, there is analytical gold in those documents if the data can be structured and mined efficiently. Some asset owners rely on providers with rigid or outdated front-end technology, so even if they could handle the data, many asset owners rely on a separate platform or (gulp) Excel for portfolio analytics.
For decades, SEI has implemented robust solutions for investment processing and data management. For SEI Novus, data management is something we did behind the scenes to drive portfolio intelligence. We know asset owners with an increasing allocation to private investments are overwhelmed with manual investment processing, inefficient document management, and incomplete data extraction.
Our primary focus in 2023 is providing institutional investors with scalable solutions for document management, investment processing data structuring, and portfolio analytics. SEI has the tools and expertise to solve this for asset owners across the globe. Moreover, by solving this through SEI, asset owners get the added benefit of SEI Novus, a flexible, fit-for-purpose portfolio analytics system to sit on top of their data.
We gather and organize your documents, extract and manage the key data points, and provide you with flexible software to glean insights on both your portfolio and your managers. Meanwhile, you concentrate on manager due diligence and sound portfolio decision making. That is how portfolio intelligence is achieved.
Technology services provided by SEI through its affiliates and subsidiaries
SEI Novus is not an investment advisor, broker dealer, or financial institution and does not offer or provide advice regarding analysis of securities or effecting transactions in securities. SEI Novus does not endorse or promote any mentioned investment management firm or any fund managed by any such firm. The purpose of the information herein is to demonstrate the capabilities of the SEI Novus Platform.