Vanguard Investments is reviewing its front office operations on the heels of reviews of both its middle and back office systems.

Vanguard head of marketing Colin Bold said the index manager was doing the total review of all its technologies off the back of “quite substantial growth” in the business. Simcorp was appointed late last year to become the portfolio management system for Vanguard’s back and middle offices, with Ernst & Young assisting in the early stages of that review. Bold said the current front office system was a combination of different systems, which he declined to name but is understood to include Infocomp’s Composer. Unconfirmed reports suggest Vanguard is running a prototype version of one of the contenders for the unit registry contract, which Bold said was a “;couple of months”; from finalisation.