Renaissance Capital is a global Initial Public Offering (IPO) Investment Adviser providing pre-IPO institutional research and IPO-focused investment products. Founded in 1991, Renaissance Capital collaborated with FTSE on constructing a series of IPO index and was ahead of the curve when launching two early thematic ETFs. The Renaissance IPO ETFs have minimal overlap with broad-based benchmark indices because newly public companies are included at quarterly rebalances and removed after three years.
With a small team managing funds in-house, Renaissance Capital found that day-to-day fund management operations were using an ever-increasing portion of internal resources. The IPO expert wanted to free up its Portfolio Managers’ time for the strategic side of fund management and automate all the routine aspects of their portfolio management.
Renaissance Capital chose the Ryedale Platform because it offers portfolio construction tools, ETF functions, and all-in-one data management suitable for Renaissance’s size and investment style.
Ryedale was tasked to transform their spreadsheet-based investment management process into something more rapid, repeatable, and reliable. This required implementing cloud-based portfolio management and order management systems, and automating data flows with their index vendor, fund accountant, and several broker dealers.
Direct FIX connectivity to brokers was a particularly attractive feature, allowing Renaissance Capital to avoid any turnover-based platform fees. This is important given the IPO index rules that at each quarterly rebalance include newly public companies in the portfolio and removing older constituents.
Within a month of starting the engagement, Renaissance Capital was able to monitor their funds on the Ryedale Platform. A fully functional system, managed as a service, with daily checks was put in place within two months.
The core system implementation for Renaissance Capital was very smooth. Every fund manager has its own unique process and requirements, so integrating trading venues and brokers is never quite the same from client to client and broker to broker. But our team is used to it and it’s great when you see the orders and executions flowing.
Sean Kelly,
Chief Technology Officer at Ryedale
In addition to portfolio management, Ryedale Order Management System (OMS) covers the whole order lifecycle and provides a full record of every transaction while Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) allows Renaissance to scrutinize their brokers’ execution.
The platform automated Renaissance Capital’s investment process and reduced chance of human error by giving them portfolio management and rebalance tools. The ETF Manager now trades directly through the Ryedale Platform and has completed several trouble-free quarterly rebalances on the system.
Now we have a system that is monitored constantly, running well, and mitigates our risk. Ryedale has transformed the way we do index rebalances.
Kathleen Smith,
Principal and Co-Founder of Renaissance Capital