Waddell & Reed Investment Management has gone live with Charles River Development’s Investment Management System for order management and pre-trade compliance monitoring. The U.S. investment management firm, with $47.6 billion in assets under management, has deployed the system at 60 positions in the first leg of a three-phase roll-out of the platform.

Waddell & Reed also leverages the broker-neutral Charles River Network and FIX (Financial Information eXchange) Administration for real-time global electronic trading via FIX. Waddell & Reed has seamless access to 50 of its preferred broker-dealer destinations via the network, and plans to increase connectivity to 100 sell-side providers in the near future.

Phase 1 is the initial stage of a three-phase project that is part of Waddell & Reed’s initiative to implement a centralized system to streamline workflows and gain efficiencies in portfolio management, trading and compliance monitoring. The implementation completes the Phase 1 rollout of Charles River IMS across Waddell & Reed’s four equity desks, including U.S. domestic and international securities, derivatives and foreign exchange. During the next phase, Waddell & Reed will implement Charles River IMS across its money market desk, while Phase 3 will focus on its fixed Income operations.

Waddell & Reed is using Charles River’s Application Management outsourced solution, based on clients’ unique needs. Waddell & Reed receives 24×7 application management and support, including alert notification, performance monitoring and tuning and user administration.

“As a fundamental investment management firm, we are continually focused on achieving long-term success,” said Larry Cipolla, senior vice president and COO for Waddell & Reed. “Charles River allows our investment professionals to easily trade and monitor any security in real time – with greater confidence. Charles River’s services also provide day-to-day system monitoring, rendering ‘real’ savings over the cost of a full-time internal IT resource.”

The Charles River Network, which is fully integrated with Charles River IMS, directly connects Waddell & Reed’s traders to its sell-side brokers and other global trading venues – allowing them to handle larger trade volumes, gain new FIX capabilities across multiple asset classes and access algorithmic strategies of their choice and new liquidity destinations. Waddell & Reed subscribes to Charles River’s FIX Administration for proactive administration, monitoring and support of FIX software and connectivity.