Bouwfonds Investment Management says solution will ‘add value for clients through transparency’

The European investment management company Bouwfonds Investment Management has chosen, Taliance, a leading developer of IT solutions for the investment-property market, to supply and implement a solution to help manage its €5.7 billion worth of assets. Taliance’s FinAsset is currently being implemented across the organisation to help ensure compliance to new regulations, meet the need for increased transparency and provide enhanced business information to help add value for its clients.

“Regulation is just one of the drivers for change. Given that we will be able to standardise, increase efficiency, manage our future in a better way and add value for our investors through transparency – these qualities will put us ahead of the competition. Right now our competitors are looking at what we are planning to achieve with Taliance with great interest,” says Peter van Dijke, Bouwfonds head of operations.

The new solution will replace a combination of spreadsheets and a proprietary system. “This worked well to a point,” adds van Dijke. “But it was weak when it came to managing our assets’ future. FinAsset is giving us the opportunity to standardise across five business units located in different parts of Europe. We wanted an asset management solution that was mature, removing the need for costly development work. FinAsset fitted the brief perfectly because it is highly configurable, yet doesn’t require much development input.”

Bouwfonds is also expressing serious interest in Taliance’s fund management solution Global Fund. “It’s definitely on our radar and a desirable solution once FinAsset is fully operational across all business units by the end of the year,” says van Dijke, who believes that for many years the real estate investment industry has failed to invest sufficiently in IT, but that this trend is now reversing.

Bouwfonds specialises in providing responsible investment products for institutional and private customers. Around 80% of its assets under management are mainstream commercial and residential real estate, while the remaining 20% are more unconventional; namely car parks, communications infrastructure and agricultural assets. Almost all its funds have a European-based asset focus – but although current investors are mainly Dutch and German, it is experiencing increasing interest from US and Asian investors.