Global buy-side service provider Linedata, integrates with a risk solution provider that can beef up trading capabilities as well as global distribution.

Buy-side solutions provider, Linedata announced a partnership with Riskdata SA, a provider in the risk solutions space. The firms’ combined efforts will support asset managers at large, but mainly hedge funds.

“Our partnership is timely because there’s significant emphasis on how financial institutions handle risk management,” said Ed Gouldstone, head of hedge fund product strategy at Linedata. “Riskdata can employ heavy computation, functionality, and handle derivatives, with cross asset coverage.”
Among the integrated solution’s capabilities are end-of-day risk reporting service, including pre-defined reports and covering VaR (value-at-risk), exposure, stress tests, interactive risk analysis, with dynamic risk views displaying risk allocation by strategy and other indicators and position attributions in two separate packages.

In addition to portfolio management risk solutions, the Linedata and Riskdata combined solution will offer an array of tools for buy-side traders.
“The product will provide post-trade risk evaluation, but also pre-trade, so that as a trader, you can employ scenario testing and see if your investments will change sensitivity to gold or oil…we think it will be powerful and driven by strategy.”

Linedata’s timely partnership comes at a time when regulatory change is “in the pipeline,” according to Gouldstone. “People now have to produce these risk numbers,” he said. Additionally, growing SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) requirements for hedge funds to register, and in Europe, there is growing regulatory scrutiny around UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities).

Together, Linedata and Riskdata SA have a strong global presence. In North America, their partnership will focus largely on the U.S. and Canada—a not yet well-penetrated North American market.

“We were have built a small presence in Canada over the course of the last 18 months to two years…showing them our functionality to our risk clients in Canada. There’s yet to be a lot of outreach,” Gouldstone told Markets Media.