CutterCast: Are You Effectively Utilizing Your Performance Measurement Team?

Gina McCafferty has 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She served at Cutter from 1999 to 2011 as Principal and Managing Director of CutterResearch, and she was instrumental in growing that business. Gina returned to Cutter in 2017, and established and ran the company’s Wealth Management research division. In 2019, she was appointed to Head of Research, responsible for Asset Management and Wealth Management product development and delivery to over 200 member firms around the globe. Gina was previously at Investit Ltd., where she served for six years as head of the company’s research service. Prior to that, she held senior positions at DST International with product responsibility for their global accounting and performance measurement systems, and at SunGard as Vice President of Client Services for their securities trading products.

Julie Snogren joined Cutter in 2021 and bring extensive expertise in performance and attribution - from oversight, calculations, monitoring, and managing the regulatory environment to automation of reporting and customizing reports for complex portfolios. Her experience includes deep dives into investment approaches that explain manager decisions that drive investment results. She has worked with equity, fixed income, multi-asset investment, and alternative portfolios, providing a solid understanding of the fundamental drivers of returns across a range of markets.

Julie’s experience in various roles also involved substantial emphasis on independent research, and the creation of communication materials and presentations. In Julie’s most recent role as Vice President, Global Performance Measurement, at Brown Brothers Harriman, she led a team of analysts that supported the global client base for all performance and attribution needs. She worked on various products across the fund range, including 40 Act, ETFs, UCITS, institutional/separate accounts, and alternative portfolios. Her accomplishments in this role included initiating and leading RFPs, resulting in the implementation of SS&C’s Sylvan Application. Other successes in this role included product roadmap enhancements and efficiencies to the workflow that increased current client adoption of performance services from 14% to 40% and increased new client onboarding by 68%.

Prior to her role at Brown Brothers Harriman, Julie spent 12 years in various roles at Oppenheimer Funds, where she led the Performance Measurement team. She ran the production of alternative product financial statements, utilizing GAAP, FASB, GASB, and Insurance accounting standards inclusive of the audit coordination/completion. Julie also spent time in several analyst roles in fund accounting, which gave her the opportunity to be the lead on multiple high-profile projects, involving the creation of GIPS requirements, designing the accounting workflow for newly acquired institutional products, and the successful start-up of several commercial paper conduit portfolios.

Julie holds a bachelor of science in accounting from Columbia College and a Graduate Certificate of Advanced Study in Management from Northeastern University.

Ambika D’Souza is Vice President in the Performance & Analysis group of T. Rowe Price Associates. She has overall leadership responsibility for the data management, GIPS, and strategic projects activities of the Performance & Analysis organization.

Prior to joining the firm in May 2018, Ambika was Vice President at State Street Investment Manager Services, Boston and oversaw the GIPS group that serviced State Street Global Advisors, a GIPS compliant firm. Previously, she was responsible for the global implementation of a new performance system. Prior to joining State Street, Ambika was Analytics Manager for the public assets of the Lucent Technologies retirement plans. Before that, she was the Head of Performance at WestLB Asset Management in London. Ambika brings over 20 years of performance and analytics experience.

Ambika holds a BEng. Honors in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College, University of London, and an MSc in Operational Research from the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and is CIPM (Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement) certified. She is also involved in various industry associations including membership of CFA Institute (CFAi) GIPS Technical Committee, CFAi GIPS Investment Manager Subcommittee, CFAi USIPC, and CIPM Standards Setting.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in today’s session are my views and are not the views of my current or former employers or any industry bodies I sit on.

Jonathan McGee, CFA, CIPM, is vice president, global head of the Investment Analytics & Delivery team for Manulife Investment Management, leading staff located in Boston, Toronto, Hong Kong, Montreal, London and Manila. In this role, he is responsible for the global analytics and reporting organization that supports portfolio and strategy-level investment data presented across the Manulife Investment Management enterprise and for ensuring results are fully compliant with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS). Specific functions overseen are performance measurement, analytics, attribution, quantitative development, internal/client reporting, and service management.

Jon previously spent five years as the senior vice president and head of performance analysis and client reporting at Putnam Investments, where he was co-chair of the company’s GIPS committee. Additional responsibilities included data governance and management, along with driving strategic initiatives related to business intelligence and advanced analytics. Prior to that, Jon worked at State Street, establishing the company’s center of excellence for the outsourcing of performance and analytics services. Earlier in his career, Jon worked at Investors Bank & Trust, where he oversaw the firm’s centralized performance measurement group.

Jon is a CFA charterholder and holds a Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM). He is a member of the GIPS Technical Committee.

Craig McCullough is the Manager of Investment Performance and Analytics for the $200 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a public pension fund, and is responsible for all trust level performance, allocation, and attribution reporting. Craig has served the Teachers of Texas in various Investment Performance Measurement positions within the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) for over 20 years, through multiple Chief Investment Officers as well as historic market shocks. Craig acquired his undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Texas in 1999.