There is a much larger segment of the asset management industry looking for Total Portfolio View (TPV) but let’s be clear: TPV isn’t a unicorn. It’s been here the whole time.
Today, TPV (aka Whole Portfolio View) is the star of vendor marketing agendas, often presented in aspirational tones. Yet, TPV has existed for decades under the word jumble of multi-asset class portfolio risk, analytics, and reporting. So why is it suddenly the flavor of the proverbial month?
In short, asset managers are now looking to establish their version of TPV, joining the asset owner community that has been working toward, and utilizing, TPV for an extended period.
This growing demand makes TPV solutioning more complex, but achievable. The goal is similar—consolidated risk and performance views—but the ingredients are more nuanced, especially for firms with a diverse set of front office applications. Each firm must balance a unique blend of scale, control, timeliness, and sophistication.
Let’s examine those elements to get a better sense of TPV’s evolution.
Our firm knows this evolutionary path well as we have been implementing TPV-like solutions for asset owners for over 15 years. Read our client stories
TPV represents a consolidated risk-focused view of a portfolio, typically across public and private markets. Originally, TPV was the domain of institutions, pension managers, and other asset owners looking to support decisions on where to allocate their investments.
Asset owners – ranging from highly sophisticated to relatively simple organizations – have long sought a clear, comprehensive view of how the entirety of their investments were performing across public and private domains. The goal has been to achieve this through normalized frameworks and standardized analytics.
Historically, these reports were far from dynamic or interactive; in fact, they were once printed on green, lined dot-matrix paper. Despite their limitations, they provided boards or trustees with essential insights into risk and supported allocation decisions. In the early days, TPV reports were cobbled together on spreadsheets, drawing on data from the firms’ custodian or administrators (e.g. accounting book of record). Ten to 15 years ago, vendors began presenting TPV via online dashboards, and today, solutions have evolved to offer fully interactive, in-app experiences.
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Asset Managers |
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For the pension and endowment community, two big shifts are occurring that are raising expectations for TPV-related data:
Total portfolio view concepts have been part of the asset owner ethos for a while. Pensions and endowments are now raising their expectations on when trusted TPV data is available and how quickly they can act on that data.
This shift often leads to two key considerations:
The total portfolio requirement is transitioning into a full-fledged investment approach change.
Some leading organizations are beginning to embrace a Total Portfolio Approach (TPA), reshaping fundamental investment processes to align with the principles of TPV. This shift moves away from rigid, benchmark-driven frameworks towards an integrated approach that influences decision-making at every level — right down to daily team activities.
While TPA adoption is still in the early innings, momentum is gaining and we expect broader adoption moving forward (not a controversial view).
For asset managers—those managing mutual funds, institutional assets, and insurance assets—TPV is a newer mandate. It supports multi-asset strategies and reflects the growing integration of private investments and alternatives into standard, diversified portfolios.
This evolution places a different stress on managers compared to asset owners: managers trade far more actively and are typically supported by more than one Investment Book of Record (IBOR), adding complexity to achieving a single, trusted view.
Asset managers that once operated in silos, typically by asset class or product line, are now acting more dynamically to deliver multi-asset solutions to clients like … institutions and asset owners. To achieve this, diverse global asset managers need trusted, consolidated views of portfolio risk across all investments, normalized for the consumer, and updated on a daily basis at minimum. The largest managers in the world now face similar requirements to produce a TPV, but at scale and across multiple regions.
While asset owners may have been “ahead” in adopting TPV, asset managers have invested heavily in owning the accuracy of their position data through one or more IBORs. They have made significant investments and strides in supporting a trusted “version of the truth” – owning the accuracy of their position data – through the implementation of one or many IBORs.
These IBOR capabilities ensure that managers trade on their best version of critical investment information—cash, securities, corporate actions, and more. While a custodian, administrator, or fund accountant may support “official” books and records, managers have evolved to increasingly rely on their IBOR for real-time decision-making, ensuring agility and confidence in execution.
“Honey, we’re conflating acronyms again!”
As private investments become more common across both asset managers and asset owners and multi-asset solutions are in vogue, delivering a Total Portfolio View is a more universal need. Hence the marketing crescendo from investments, accounting, risk, and operations vendors and service providers. But to create a TPV that can enable active intraday trading, firms need to build their data foundation on the most up to date info available: their IBOR books. This is where some confusion starts to build for many.
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TPV is a comprehensive, analytic view of risk across an entire portfolio, while TPA is a holistic decision-making framework that could require change across people, process, and systems to manage the whole fund as one portfolio. |
If your firm is expected to trade actively, your IBOR is likely powering your TPV. If you’re a less active asset owner, there is no need to force an IBOR, although it’s becoming more rare to operate without one. You can still get the risk reporting result, just not as timely or actively.
Asset owners shouldn’t feel pressured by the market’s TPV acceleration. If your need for responsiveness has grown, consider adopting an IBOR to strengthen your TPV or move away from static strategic asset allocations (SAA). For asset managers, the path is clearer: you’ve invested in IBOR, now it’s time to connect the dots and fully integrate TPV for real-time decision making.
TPV isn’t new, but its importance is accelerating. Asset owners and managers alike are raising the bar for speed, accuracy, and integration. Whether through IBOR adoption or a shift to TPA, the industry is moving towards a more dynamic, holistic investment approach.
Now is the time to evaluate your firm’s needs and determine how TPV, IBOR, and TPA can each play a role in positioning your firm for the future.
Have questions about TPV? Our experts are here to help.