Retirement Systems of Alabama Now Live on SimCorp Dimension

The RSA now managing its growing alternatives portfolio, together with its entire investment book, in one multi-asset investment system.

SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services to the global financial services industry, today announces The Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA), which is composed of governmental defined benefit pension plans located within the State of Alabama, USA, has successfully completed the implementation of SimCorp Dimension. SimCorp’s automated investment management system has gone live, universally supporting the RSA’s investments, worth approximately $40 billion in assets under management. The implementation consolidates the management of the RSA’s  diverse alternatives and real estate portfolio, together with its entire investment book.

The RSA internally manages all investment decisions for the pensions of  qualifying state employees, judges and teachers, and employees of participating local government agencies in the state of Alabama. To continue to meet its members’ retirement needs, the RSA has diversified its pensions’ portfolio across several asset classes, including holdings  in alternative investments such as real estate investments in  golf courses, resort hotels and office buildings in Alabama, as well as ownership of a 53 story office building in downtown New York, NY. The implementation of SimCorp Dimension, carried out in under a year, provides the support required to efficiently manage these investments in one scalable, multi-asset class system.

Vital in the safe-guarding of the RSA’s assets is the ability to now automate much of the investment processing, removing the operational risks arising from manual processing. These automated processes span across accounting, reconciliation, cash management and corporate actions. The implementation replaces a legacy solution and eliminates a host of manual processes.

With SimCorp’s transparent and real-time Investment Book of Record (IBOR) at the heart of operations, the RSA has one source of accurate and timely data, enabling superior governance over plan commitments and transparent reporting to key stakeholders.

As part of the implementation, SimCorp has delivered the following functionality to the RSA:

• Multi-asset class support, including alternatives and private debt
• IBOR for complete and accurate record keeping across all asset classes
• Robust reporting capabilities, accessing underlying transaction data across all security types
• Global portfolio management, including local currencies and FX
• Investment support that is scalable to new volumes and growth
• Straight Through Processing (STP) on investment processes
• Intra-day reporting in line with the RSA’s strict investment policy
• Investment transparency for board of control and other stakeholders 

David Adams, Assistant CFO and head of Investment Accounting  at RSA said: "Given our fiduciary responsibility to our members, we have always sought to ensure that our operations are conducted to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. SimCorp Dimension enables us to do just that. Since going live, we’ve been able to automate many of the investment processes with increased STP rates. This has freed up many of our team members from performing a range of manual tasks. We believe a consolidated system that covers all asset classes is the best approach to track our assets and to accurately measure exposure in our diversified strategy.”

James Corrigan, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of SimCorp North America said:
"We are pleased to have completed The Retirement System of Alabama implementation, using our robust and standardized offering for state pension plans. Many pension plans are turning to insourcing of asset management in a bid to reduce costs and gain access to newer investment opportunities. SimCorp is proud to serve some of the leading US State and Canadian pension plans. We are committed to helping our pension clients achieve the operational efficiency required to support the administration of cost-effective plans, which ultimately allows plans members to retire with financial security.”

Enquiries regarding this announcement should be addressed to:
Mittal Shah, SimCorp UK/North America, +1 646 843 1707, mittal.shah@simcorp.com
Anders Crillesen, SimCorp Corporate Communications, +45 3544 6474, anders.crillesen@simcorp.com

About SimCorp
SimCorp provides integrated, best-in-class investment management solutions to the world’s leading asset managers, fund managers, asset servicers, pension and insurance funds, wealth managers and sovereign wealth funds. Whether deployed on premise or as an ASP solution, its core system, SimCorp Dimension, supports the entire investment value chain and range of instruments, all based on a market-leading IBOR. SimCorp invests more than 20% of its annual revenue in R&D, helping clients develop their business and stay ahead of ever-changing industry demands. Listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen, SimCorp is a global company, regionally covering all of Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.simcorp.com.