SS&C Unveils Singularity for AI-Enhanced Back Office

SS&C Technologies is developing a middle- and back-office platform for accounting and reconciliation activities that uses machine learning to assist with trade breaks and other errors. 

The platform, named SS&C Singularity, is being used internally at SS&C during its soft launch, and will provide a single platform for fund-accounting operations. Delivered on a software-as-a-service basis, the machine-learning logic embedded within the software can read user-submitted data files, such as custodian-provided drop copies, and identify trade breaks and reconciliations issues on a near-real-time basis. Robotic process automation (RPA) techniques are used to automate workflows and cut down on manual intervention.

“What we’ve already built, which is really just the tip of the iceberg, is that we’re automating everything after the break,” said Normand Boulanger, vice chairman at SS&C Technologies, speaking on a panel during SS&C’s annual Deliver client conference, held in Las Vegas on September 12 and 13. “SS&C Singularity is the first smart system, we’ve embedded the AI into it, and that’s a key point—a lot of people are inventing AI tools to sit on top of legacy systems, but I don’t think that’s going to be particularly effective. Here we’ve embedded it into the system, so every time an event takes place, there’s some sort of robotics or machine-learning process taking place.”

The platform is designed to be an end-to-end solution that works across asset classes and industry sectors, including fund administration, institutional asset management, insurance, and real estate investment trusts.

“The vision is that, over time, this will be a single platform that serves a large percentage of our customer base, and will give [clients] leverage on a total-cost-of-ownership basis,” said Scott Kurland, global product and marketing manager for Singularity,

SS&C estimates that productivity gains from using the platform could reach “close to 50 percent” in some instances—one client that is currently live with the platform, said Kyle Fields, VP at SS&C GlobeOp, has reduced processes that took six business days to accomplish down to two.

“How we’re doing that is in a couple of different ways, one of which is that the pipes are connected to Singularity as far as all of the Bloomberg data feeds that are coming in, securities masters, corporate actions, valuations and so forth, all of that is real time versus having to go through a terminal, run a report and so forth,” he said. “In addition to that, the reconciliations tool is built inside Singularity, so instead of having a system that sits on top, we have the ability to run reconciliations, identify the break, and use the artificial intelligence inside Singularity to rectify the break on the spot.”

In addition to several live clients, another five are running parallel states between their existing setup and an instance of Singularity, he added. SS&C said that there are no deadlines for transitioning to Singularity as of yet and that it is still early days for the product.

Correction (9/13): This story has been updated to reflect multiple clients being live on Singularity and to clarify the soft-launch period.