Once upon a time, a large fund manager asked its global custodian to take care of the accounting, valuation and reporting capabilities of its new investment fund. The custodian wanted to keep the fund manager as a client because of the potential to cross-sell other revenue-generating services, so it built a bespoke fund administration solution to meet its client’s needs at a price that kept everyone happy.

But as time went on, and the financial crisis hit traditional asset classes including equities, the fund manager - like so many of its peers at insurance companies, pension funds and hedge funds - saw its assets shrink and was forced to look further afield to the more complex investments of derivatives and emerging market debt to strengthen its performance.