The Retirement Systems of Alabama

The Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) decided to move to SimCorp SaaS (Software as a Service) Platform in 2016. This move kickstarted the RSA’s ability to actualize tremendous improvements around the efficiency of their middle and back office business processes. 

Fast forward to the present, the RSA is now adding SimCorp’s Front Office solution, making them a front to back user of SimCorp Dimension. This strategic move will eliminate manual reconciliations between systems, leveraging middle and back office data to supplement the investment team’s investment decision making. 

The RSA realizes support cost savings, decreased operational and financial risk by moving to SimCorp’s SaaS solution

True to their mission statement, the RSA has taken the necessary steps to ensure their members can enjoy a successful retirement by remaining on the forefront of technology. For the RSA to keep up with the massive volatility in the market, they understand that they must do two things: keep up with a diverse asset allocation and find ways to optimize their operating model. 

By moving forward with the implementation of SimCorp Dimension hosted in its SaaS platform, the RSA has been able to realize a host of benefits that the organization had not seen before. The RSA was finally able to:

• Reduce operations support cost by 22%. 
• Cut down their days to close by an astounding seven days.
• Free up their employees’ time to focus on more meaningful projects. 

The move to SaaS has further provided the RSA with a highly scalable, secure, and cost-efficient solution. SimCorp SaaS platform eliminated the need for training and retraining of dedicated IT capacity and brought on ease of managed upgrades, disaster recovery testing and limited patches apply.  

Additional benefits the RSA has experienced since moving to SimCorp SaaS solution are the frequency of their upgrades which they have described as seamless and easy to take, thanks to SimCorp’s Continuous Testing model and the frequency of their reconciliations which they can now run multiple times per day without intervention. This has moved the RSA to a much more exceptions-based work environment and facilitated the efficiencies in the month end close due to improved data quality and automation.

The RSA expands its partnership with SimCorp by adding the Front Office solution

With the addition of the Front Office, the RSA will have real-time and accurate firm-wide views across all asset classes (Equities, Fixed Income, Options, Futures, Alternatives, Money Market, Commercial) and eliminate antiquated workflows and unnecessary operational risk. They will be able to focus on their operational alpha to be able to reinvest those savings they will actualize from the move to better serve their communities. 

Having one single resource to centralize all investments information will allow the RSA to stay on top of the portfolio risks with aggregated exposures on different levels in the investment structure. Additionally, streamlining and centralizing all investment teams onto a single platform while allowing them to maintain their day in the life needs and pivot away from excel and bifurcated workflows will result in less manual workflows for the RSA operations team.

SimCorp is slated to complete implementation of the RSA’s Front Office solution in 2023 with confidence that the move to a full front to back solution will support the RSA’s ultimate goals of serving its members despite market volatility.

Quick Facts

AuM: 43.9 bn USD
Headquarters: Montgomery, AL, USA
Website: https://www.rsa-al.gov/

About The Retirement Systems of Alabama

The Retirement Systems of Alabama is a state government agency that provides retirement benefits to qualified persons employed by state-supported educational institutions, persons of cities, towns, and quasi-public organizations, and qualified judges and justices. It is the mission of The RSA to serve the interests of their members by preserving the excellent benefits and soundness of the Systems at the least expense to the state of Alabama and all Alabama taxpayers as well as secure the best investments and services for their membership, and to ensure that they do everything possible to help their members prepare for and enjoy a successful retirement.