Shaun Burch, European Finance Manager, Curzon Global Partners

Curzon Global Partners is part of the Ixis AEW Europe (IAE) Group, a leading European real estate investment manager. The group is focused on the creation, execution and management of discretionary investment vehicles, separate account strategies and strategic portfolio advisory services to both institutional investors and high net worth individuals. The group currently has over 170 professional who are responsible for approximately €9.3 billion of assets under management. Curzon Global Partners forms the London office of IAE and currently manages gross assets of over €675 million including offices, industrial premises, logistics parks and development properties in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium.

Eighteen months ago a decision was taken to use Management Reports International (MRI) to manage and maintain the corporate and fund accounting operations for Curzon. This was to be carried over the internet using Netsource as an application service provider. The Netsource option, which is operated out of Cleveland Ohio USA, ensured that initial costs and overheads were kept low by negating the need for a large-scale IT infrastructure of servers and support staff. Netsource provides a 24 hour network support team and MRI UK operate a helpdesk during normal European business hours.

The modular nature of MRI ensures that it is very flexible and can be set up in a variety of different ways. We initially mapped out our business processes in detail to ensure that MRI was configured to meet our needs. The Windows look and feel to the system ensures that it is easy to use and that new users can intuitively find their way around. We have recently upgraded to the latest version 2.01 Update with no significant problem.

Using MRI to manage both our corporate and fund accounting roles ensures that a wide variety of sensitive information is processed for forecasting and expense analysis. The ability to restrict users from entities and specific nominal ledger codes ensures that all access to information can be easily maintained and controlled.

On the fund accounts our property managers carry out all day to day activities on their own system and report via their core systems or excel on a monthly/quarterly basis. We are currently planning to roll out our MRI system to a selection of our managing agents throughout Europe who will be responsible for the update and maintenance of the property data on MRI.

This ensures that Curzon retains ownership of all data relating to our properties and our asset/portfolio managers have access to real time data which allows them to make decisions based upon information that is verifiably up to date and complete. The drill down capability on MRI allows them immediate access to standard reporting traditionally provided by property managers (e.g. arrears, cash management etc) without the delays and inefficiencies of communication inherent in two separate systems. The added advantage is that the property manager still maintains control and ownership over the data, without interference from the fund manager.

No one system is perfect across so many functions, but we definitely made the right purchase decision. The system meets our current needs and our needs for the immediate future. We anticipate that our numbers will grow significantly over the coming year and the pricing flexibility for additional users will ensure that our overhead costs remain under control.

Plans for future development of MRI by Curzon include the BACS and Autopay functionality for electronic payments in the UK/Europe, development of existing reporting functionality and a valuation package interface.