Blueglen & Arcfina: From Excel-Based Workflows to Institutional Credit Infrastructure
Overview
Blueglen Investment Partners is a London-based alternative investment manager with a European credit focus. As trading activity expanded across structured credit, derivatives, and multi-counterparty workflows, Excel-based processes were becoming increasingly operationally fragile and difficult to scale. To support its continued growth, Blueglen implemented Arcfina as a unified portfolio and risk management platform for its credit strategies.
Key Highlights
- Replacement of Excel-based workflows with integrated portfolio and risk management platform
- Unified front and middle office operating model
- Automated reconciliation across 20+ accounts
- Support for structured credit and credit derivatives within a unified operational environment
- Bloomberg VCON and JPM FIX trading integrations
- Reduced operational dependency on manual processes
Blueglen’s story
Like many credit managers, Blueglen initially relied on Excel to manage portfolios, exposures and operational workflows. While flexible, this approach introduced increasing limitations as trading activity expanded across instruments, portfolios and counterparties.
Manual processes remained a significant operational overhead and were reducing confidence in the consistency of data across front and middle office functions. As institutional expectations around transparency and operational robustness increased, the need for a more scalable and controlled infrastructure became clear.
Blueglen evaluated several portfolio management system providers but found that many solutions were not designed with credit strategies at their core. Flexibility, instrument coverage and the ability to adapt to real workflows were key considerations.
Unlike many traditional portfolio management systems designed primarily around equity workflows, Arcfina was selected due to its flexibility and support for complex credit trading and operational workflows.
From fragmentation to integrated control
Blueglen now uses Arcfina across both front and middle office functions, creating a consistent and unified operating environment. This integrated approach removes the need for manual data movement between systems, improving confidence in the numbers used for both investment decisions and reporting.
The solution
Arcfina provides Blueglen with a single platform supporting the full lifecycle of its credit strategies.
Key capabilities include:
- A transition from Excel-based portfolio management to a fully integrated system
- Front office visibility on position analytics including custom spread, discount margin, and yield measures
- Enabling Blueglen to manage structured credit, CDS, FX, and treasury workflows within a single operational environment, including CLO tranches, single-name and index CDS, FX spot/forward/swap transactions, repos, and treasury bills
- Streamlined daily operational workflows across trade capture, reconciliation, and collateral management for three portfolios and 20+ accounts in a multi-counterparty environment
- Seamless integration with Bloomberg VCON
The results
Since implementing Arcfina, Blueglen has established a more robust and scalable operational foundation. The move away from Excel has improved operational robustness with investors and counterparties by improving transparency, consistency and auditability across workflows. There is a reduced reliance on spreadsheet-based controls alongside greater consistency across front and middle office workflows, as processes that previously required manual intervention are now automated or centrally managed.
At the same time, the front office benefits from immediate access to consistent position and risk data, supporting faster and more informed decision-making.
A scalable partnership
Arcfina continues to work closely with Blueglen to evolve the platform in line with the firm’s requirements, delivering enhancements across analytics, integrations and workflows.
- JPM FIX integration for FX trade capture
- Automated EMIR Reporting for daily trade, position, and collateral files automatically sent from Arcfina
- Automated daily trade delivery to prime broker counterparties and regulatory bodies
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Arcfina supports institutional credit managers across portfolio management, risk, and operations.
Speak with us about building scalable infrastructure for complex credit strategies.