Led By New Management, Trustmark Buys Off Shelf To Replace Homegrown System

LAKE Forest, Ill.-based Trustmark Insurance Co., with some $700 million in assets under management, has selected Princeton Financial Systems Inc.'s Pam for Securities portfolio management and accounting system. The selection, finalized in late December, was driven by the appointment of new management at Trustmark--management that demanded more extensive investment and regulatory reporting functionality than the incumbent system offers. At Trustmark, the PC-based Pam will replace an internally developed mainframe-based system which has been in use for more than 10 years.

Trustmark officials decline to comment, citing a companywide policy of not speaking for publication. However, a source at the insurance company says that Trustmark expects to complete its conversion to Pam by late March or early April. The new portfolio system will support four traders.

According to the source, the search for a new system was sparked by a change in leadership in Trustmark's investment management department last April. The source says a newly hired executive had used Pam in his previous position with an investment management firm. "With the inhouse system we have in place, we realized the traders were not getting the information they needed to make good investment decisions," says the source. The decision to initiate a search for a new system followed shortly thereafter, in May.

While the source says Trustmark considered offerings by five vendors, he declines to name them. However, the field was narrowed down to two finalists: Princeton's Pam and Securities Software & Consulting Inc.'s Complete Asset Management Reporting and Accounting (Camra) system. Trustmark conducted inhouse testing of both systems from late September into early November before tapping Princeton.

In its quest for a new portfolio management system, Trustmark searched for one that would provide the investment reporting that the insurance company's incumbent system could not, says the source.

"The system we had just did not allow us much flexibility in looking at our assets and preparing reports," says the source. However, the source says that any of the PC-based systems the company looked at--including Camra--could have filled the bill.

The source says Trustmark eventually selected Pam based on the system's regulatory reporting capabilities. Trustmark was "looking for versatility when it comes to handling the constantly changing statutory reporting requirements," the source says.

Although Trustmark has completed testing and finalized its selection, a decision concerning what hardware Pam will be deployed on has yet to be made, says the source. "We know the general parameters of what kind of equipment we will use," says the source, declining to specify those parameters. "But as far as the brand names and all of the hardware configurations, a decision has not been made yet."