BMO Harris Private Banking Deploys Charles River IMS, Charles River Anywhere and FIX Network to Automate Wealth Management Operations

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Charles River Development (Charles River), a front- and middle-office investment software solutions provider, today announced that BMO Harris Private Banking (BMO Harris), one of Canada’s largest wealth managers, implemented the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS), Charles River Anywhere (CRA) and the Charles River FIX Network. The project is part of BMO Harris’ initiative to manage for growth by automating its domestic and international equities, fixed income, and mutual fund portfolios on a single, consolidated platform that offers remote access via the Web.

“It gives them all the core content of portfolio management, along with a dash board, charts, and a place where they can put their notes, attach rules, and more.”

“Having our entire organization working with Charles River has created significant efficiencies between our portfolio managers, traders and compliance officers,” said Lara Arabian, director of Strategic Initiatives, BMO Harris Private Banking. “Previously, we were dependent upon complex spreadsheets, and manual re-entry of orders and trades. Now, we can easily submit trades and orders, rebalance portfolios, and handle large policy trades; taking into consideration all client and firm compliance rules throughout the trading process. We also have the flexibility to meet increased client demands for transparency and sophisticated instruments, such as options and derivatives, which historically have been unique investments for us.”

According to Richard Mason, head of Investment Management, BMO Harris Private Banking, Charles River helps the firm focus on issues facing advisors. “Canada’s wealth management marketplace is becoming a much more complex environment,” said Mason. “The ability to understand clients’ issues, and provide dynamic portfolios properly aligned to those issues, is absolutely critical. This requires appropriate investment in technology tools and architecture. Charles River really puts us into a new world in terms of scalability and functionality, so we can deliver, better, more efficient and timely solutions.”

CRA provides the firm’s 134 investment counselors across Canada with a Web access tool to remotely monitor and manage portfolios, compliance, trades and post-trade information in real-time for wealth management clients. “Charles River Anywhere has all the functionalities of Charles River IMS that our investment counselors know, but with a very unique look and feel that is very comfortable to remote users,” says Arabian. “It gives them all the core content of portfolio management, along with a dash board, charts, and a place where they can put their notes, attach rules, and more.”

“Charles River’s scalable solutions allow wealth managers like BMO Harris to automate their business to improve efficiency and focus on meeting customer demands,” said Spiros Giannaros, vice president, Charles River Development. “Our workflow-driven approach and easy-to-deploy Web-based tools increase productivity for remote advisors; helping them manage large volumes of multiple accounts and orders quickly and efficiently. The Charles River FIX Network provides BMO Harris’ traders with seamless connection to sell-side brokers, along with complete FIX software administration, connectivity management and support for each broker and trading destination.”

About BMO Harris Private Banking

BMO Harris Private Banking serves the needs of high net worth clients and their families and helps them deal with a wide range of complex financial issues, providing comprehensive wealth management expertise. BMO Harris Private Banking professionals are a team of leading specialists in a variety of disciplines including banking, investment management, estate, trust and various family office services such as philanthropic and business succession planning. BMO Harris Private Banking is part of BMO Financial Group’s Private Client Group. The Private Client Group provides integrated wealth management services in Canada and the United States and had total assets under management and administration of $284 billion as at April 30, 2011.

About Charles River Development

Charles River Development provides software, hosting and data services to automate front- and middle-office investment operations for buy-side firms. On-premises software and SaaS solutions support portfolio management, compliance and risk monitoring, order and execution management, and access to global liquidity. The company has more than 300 clients in 38 countries in the institutional asset and fund management, alternative, wealth management, insurance, banking, pension and custody markets.