The benefits of SDK’s are well-understood across industries: quicker development, lower costs, better quality results and ongoing access to new features and functions. So why don’t investment managers reap these benefits?

To be clear, some legacy investment technologies offer ‘developer tooling’. But too often they fall short by only supporting data flows in and out of a system.

Few allow you to extend on the tooling and functionality within a platform. For instance, a unique way to visualise and display data, proprietary calculation models for investment analytics, or complete applications for users to perform step-by-step actions that bring together many custom components.

Inflexible technology is a problem for investment managers. They need scale but also freedom to demonstrate their uniqueness. After all, if your investment process is brought together entirely using a standard system then where do you differentiate?

Without an SDK in their arsenal, CTOs, COOs and CIOs will remain burdened by the high costs of both extensive in-house development and rigid front-to-back-office systems. Faced with limited technology budgets and resources, an SDK allows asset managers to better prioritise and optimise their in-house efforts and ultimately do more with less. Crucially, scale can be achieved while also retaining the flexibility to demonstrate a unique investment approach.

About Jacobi
Jacobi was founded in 2014 with a vision to transform technology used for multi-asset portfolio design, analytics and client engagement. Jacobi provides its services to top-tier investors across the globe with a client base representing assets under management of over US$7 trillion. Its award-winning technology has its roots in institutional investment management and uniquely incorporates a market-leading software development kit. This allows firms to build their own models, tools and applications on the platform.