Founded in 2003, Kettle Hill Capital Management is a New York-based alternative investment manager that looks to capture inefficiencies within the marketplace that potentially present significant risk-reward opportunities for its investors.
AlphaDesk has been a trusted partner for over five years, and we relied on their team to navigate T+1. They supported and executed our migration professionally, giving us significant improvements across our settlement workflows.
Bryan Kiss
The challenge
The recent T+1 settlement changes in North America created concern amongst several investment management firms as they tried to anticipate how these new settlement timelines could impact their operational efficiencies.
Kettle Hill has a long history partnering with LSEG AlphaDesk and a reputation for institutional-grade operations. Amongst their concerns were risks of failed settlements, unnecessary fees and operational scrutiny affecting their reputation. These risks needed to be managed, whilst still allowing them to trade across their large and growing list of executing brokers and custodian relationships.
The solution
LSEG AlphaDesk’s professional services and product teams partnered with Kettle Hill’s operations team far in advance of the May 2024 T+1 deadline. Kettle Hill then became LSEG’s partner client and first user of a newly-developed integration of AlphaDesk and Broadridge’s NYFIX Matching solution. The solution enables Kettle Hill to standardise and control all settlement instructions to their large list of executing brokers. With NYFIX Matching, settlement instructions are matched shortly after execution and allocation instructions are immediately affirmed, preventing breaks between brokers and Kettle Hill’s traditional custodian accounts.
LSEG appreciated Kettle Hill’s observations to improve on all aspects of the settlements workflow. Thanks to feedback from them and other clients, AlphaDesk delivered on a suite of new tools, including regulatory-driven record keeping, accrued interest force matching, and automation tools for post-trade instructions.
The result
As a result of this partnership, LSEG was able to offer Kettle Hill an institutional-grade operations process that not only addressed their expected T+1 risks, but also implemented a solution that better scales for their future growth.
Some of the highlights
- Complete and seamless transition of all AlphaDesk clients to T+1 settlement workflows with no operational issues reported
- NYFIX Matching supports T+1 by identifying if a trade has been matched or mismatched within seconds and is currentlyavailable to all clients with additional firms being onboarded
- Deployment to the full AlphaDesk client base of significant product improvements for settlement workflows
The bottom line
AlphaDesk is committed to firms, such as Kettle Hill, to support client workflows and demonstrate an ability to execute integrations and product improvements on their behalf. At LSEG, we take pride in delivering a cost-effective solution that is built around cutting-edge technology, enabling firms to operate efficiently despite any market structure changes.
