Legal & General outsources more of its investment arm to Charles River

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
3rd December 2019

British investment, insurance and mortgage firm Legal & General is outsourcing more of its investment arm’s (LGIM’s) systems to Charles River – the US technology provider which allegedly manages $30 trillion in assets.

Managing more than £1 trillion in assets itself, the UK’s largest listed investor hopes the extended partnership with Charles River, a State Street company, will tackle the higher regulatory costs which are currently impacting the returns fund managers are able to offer customers.

Charles River: “Increasing workflow and pressure on trading desks is driving investment managers to adopt greater automation”

“Increasing workflow and pressure on trading desks is driving investment managers to adopt greater automation across their investment processes,” says Charles River’s EMEA MD Gavin Lavelle.

By consolidating onto “a centralised, cloud-based platform”, Lavelle says Legal & General can simplify its investment business structures and focus on expanding its product offerings.

The step further away from developing in-house systems will see the investor not only rely on Charles River for pre- and post-trade compliance, but also cross-asset order management.

This will see investment processes for LGIM’s index, liability driven investment (LDI), equity, fixed income, and multi-asset solutions also consolidated on one, centralised cloud platform.

Head of trading at LGIM Ed Wicks tells Financial News London it wasn’t “first and foremost a cost decision,” rather “the risk of fragmentation” with an in-house system pushed them towards “a centralised platform that could cater for all our needs”.