Investment manager AMP Capital Investors is set to finalise its $100 million overhaul of its technology systems at the end of this year.
The overhaul, which has been running for three years, included the company's trading systems, and front and back-office systems, and had cost "north of $100 million", AMP Capital Investors managing director Stephen Dunne said.
"We've just got to move AMP Life's statutory money across, which is planned for towards the end of this year," Dunne said.
The program reached a milestone in January when all of AMP Capital's products, representing about $55 billion in asset under management (AUM), were transferred onto the new systems.
The transfer of AMP Life's statutory accounts will result in the migration of another $40 billion in AUM onto the new system.
AMP Capital made the choice to engage external providers because it believes competition in the technology industry ensures it gets the most advanced solutions.
"It is best practice to utilise what is best in markets and then to have your IT team integrate those kind of capabilities, rather than taking the view of 'let's build it all internally'," Dunne said.
"That is quite a lengthy and expensive exercise and I don't think you get best-in-class development.
"Our equity trading is done through Charles River now, our derivatives are done through the Imagine system, of which BlackRock is the provider, and we use Aladdin for our fixed income trading systems [also owned by BlackRock]. For our middle office we use a range of providers, such as StatPro."
The overhaul of the system enables AMP Capital to trade a wider range of financial instruments, especially in its fixed income funds, and makes it easier to run multi-currency systems. It also made the analysis of data more efficient, Dunne said.
"What used to take people several days is now done at the push of a button," he said.
The overhaul had been a challenging process, he said. "It is not recommended for a chief executive to do more than once," he said.
AMP Capital earlier said it received two credit mandates with a combined value of more than $500 million last year, where the new systems were noted as a key differentiator by investment consultants.
