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Glossary

This page defines the InvestSuite standard terminology.

Client, Customer and User

InvestSuite is a B2B4C Company. To avoid confusion between InvestSuite's client and InvestSuite client's client, the following convention is used throughout this documentation:

  • Client: InvestSuite's customer, typically a bank or financial institution. The B2B party.
  • Customer: the Client's customer, the end-user, typically a person. The B2B4C party. This is typically used in functional/business contexts.
  • User: synonymous for Customer, but typically used in more technical contexts:
    • The User is the owner of one or more Portfolios
    • Access to InvestSuite products is controlled on a User level within the InvestSuite console

Refer to Creating a User.

Accounts

  • The Counter Account of a user is the bank account that is funded in case of a withdrawal instruction. This can be at a 3rd party bank.

  • The Broker Account of a portfolio (also known as the investor account) is, in an individual account setup, the corresponding account at the broker. This is the account the user funds to fund the portfolio.

Refer to Account Initiation.

Money

  • Paper Money (Robo Advisor only): Robo Advisor has a demo mode: the option of a 'virtual portfolio' that uses 'paper money'. The app is fully functional and will show how the portfolio holdings and value evolve, but this is not backed with actual money.
  • Real Money: real, actual money (in contrast to paper money).

Portfolio (of a User)

A Portfolio is a collection of financial assets (instruments).

A Portfolio also contains metadata (eg. portfolio name like 'My Retirement Portfolio', for displaying to the user), configuration settings to manage the portfolio (eg. a boolean to indicate that trading is allowed, the risk profile the customer had set for the portfolio, ...).

A Portfolio is owned by a User.

A Portfolio is either managed by the User (ie. through Self Investor) or managed for the user (ie. through Robo Advisor).

Refer to Create a Portfolio.

Holdings, Orders, Transactions and Movements (of a Portfolio)

  • Holdings are positions (or assets or instruments) in a portfolio: instruments and/or cash. Cash holdings are expressed in their currency.
  • An order is sent to the market, resulting in one or more transactions.
  • Transactions are a combination of movements that describe an exchange or trade.
  • A movement (or trade) is a change that impacts the holdings of a portfolio.

Warning

InvestSuite does not 'hold' anything. The broker/custodian holds the instruments and InvestSuite is kept up to date (through integration) on these holdings.

How are transactions and holdings related?

Transactions are used for performance and return calculation (eg. TWR) on a portfolio.

Holdings are used to display to the user what is inside the portfolio.

The two are (by design) not linked, and providing a consistent view to the user needs to be handled by the broker or middleware.

Refer to Transactions.

Suitability Profile, Risk Profile (of a Portfolio)

We refer to a Suitablity Profile (linked to a Portfolio) as either

  • the result of an Appropriateness Test, for Self Investor
  • the result of a Suitability Test (for an advisory or discretionary mandate), for Robo Advisor

Refer to Suitability Profiler.

Optimization, Rebalancing (of a Portfolio)

  • (Portfolio) Optimizer is an InvestSuite product which is responsible for constructing optimal Portfolios, given a set of constaints and a set of initial holdings.
  • Optimizer is typically triggered when the Portfolio Holdings change (eg. when funding) or overnight (to check whether the Portfolio is still optimal).
  • The output of Optimizer is an Optimization, an object which contains the orders that need to be executed to make the portfolio optimal, or in line with a model portfolio (ie. the delta between the current holdings and the optimal holdings).
  • When an Optimization exists, it is typically followed by a rebalancing: the process of executing the orders of an Optimization with a broker.

Refer to Optimize a portfolio.

Refer to Rebalancing.

Refer to Optimization

Entities

The business objects of InvestSuite.

Refer to Business Objects.

Reconciliation

The process of ensuring the portfolio holdings and transactions are in sync between the broker/custodian and Robo Advisor.

Investment Strategy, Policy

An Investment Strategy (also known as a Policy) refers to a set of principles designed to help an individual investor achieve their financial and investment goals.

This is part of the input for Optimizer to construct the Portfolio.

Horizon

The investment horizon. The total length of time that an investor expects to hold a security or a portfolio.

This is part of the input for Optimizer to construct the Portfolio.

Mandate

  • Discretionary (Robo Advisor only): No action from the user required to execute the recommended orders.
  • Advisory (Robo Advisor only): The user needs to approve the recommended optimization before the orders can be executed.
  • Execution-only (Self Investor only): The user decides what orders to execute.

Currency

Currencies are expressed as defined in ISO 4217.

To express cash holdings in a portfolio, they are prefixed with the $-sign followed by the currency code. For example, Australian dollar is $AUD, Euro is $EUR, United Arab Emirates dirham is $AUD.

User document

A document that relates to a specific customer. Optionally even to a specific portfolio of said customer.

Can be used by clients to share certain documents with their customers. InvestSuite only stores the metadata of the documents, the actual content binary remains in the storage of the client.