DBi Built a Firm-Controlled System of Record on Files.com for Every Counterparty File

Dynamic Beta Investments (DBi) is a New York alternative investment manager and a pioneer of hedge fund replication. It runs billions of dollars across US ETFs, European UCITS funds, and vehicles for Japanese investors under SEC, CFTC, and NFA regulation.

Running those funds day to day is an exercise in consuming other firms' files. Net asset values, cash balances, positions and risk data arrive from the custodians, administrators and counterparties that service each fund—BBH, State Street, and more than a dozen others. Every one of them delivers to an SFTP server that the counterparty itself owns and hosts. DBi's trading and middle-office work starts wherever those firms choose to put the data.

Fund Data Delivered to a Dozen Counterparty Servers

Before Files.com, DBi worked directly off those counterparty servers. Whatever a custodian posted, the team connected to that vendor's SFTP and used the file in place.

DBi wanted its own record of those inputs. Each counterparty runs its own retention window and its own practice for replacing a posted file. The firm wanted the original of every file it works from, held on its own side, exactly as delivered, for as long as it chooses: the daily net asset value files, and the cash and position data behind the middle office. The record of what a given day's numbers were run on would belong to the firm.

The counterparties own their delivery infrastructure, and DBi wanted to leave it untouched: no custodian would be asked to change how or where it delivers for one client. Any solution had to be built on DBi's side. And it had to be something the investment team could configure and operate itself.

As DBi rebuilt its data infrastructure and the roster of counterparty feeds kept growing, the specification took shape: connect outbound to every counterparty SFTP the firm dealt with, pull files on a schedule, hold the originals on DBi's side for as long as DBi wanted, keep them exactly as they arrived, and hand working copies to the tools where analysis happens. DBi selected Files.com to be that central ingest layer and system of record.

One Platform Pulling From Every Counterparty

Files.com became the one place all counterparty data lands, and the place the original of every file is kept.

DBi configured a Files.com Remote Server connection to each counterparty SFTP. DBi and each counterparty whitelisted the dedicated site IPs needed for the connection, but the counterparties kept their existing delivery infrastructure and process: they continued delivering to their own servers, and Files.com reached out and pulled. DBi's team configured the connections itself after a single walkthrough, then built the estate counterparty by counterparty over roughly a year until every available vendor was connected.

Scheduled syncs pulled each vendor's files into Files.com native storage on DBi's schedule, retaining them for as long as DBi chooses. Files.com Automations created a real-time working copy in SharePoint, where data manipulation happens, while an API key gave DBi's risk provider programmatic retrieval from the archive. The Files.com copy is never touched.

The Original of Every File, Kept on DBi's Side

With the Files.com estate in production, DBi replaced day-to-day work against a dozen separate vendor servers with a single archive the firm owns.

• Every counterparty file is held in Files.com for as long as DBi chooses, so the inputs behind any NAV extraction or risk run can be produced on demand.
• When a counterparty posts a replacement for a file, DBi still holds the original as it first arrived.
• The archive has grown to hundreds of gigabytes of retained originals.
• Adding a counterparty stopped being a project. It is one more Remote Server connection and an IP whitelist entry, and the new feed lands in the same archive and flows through the same downstream syncs.

All of it, the connections, the syncs, and the SharePoint flows, is configured and run by DBi's own team.

The Record Belongs to DBi

The record of the data DBi's funds run on belongs to DBi. Analysis happens on the SharePoint copies, while the originals sit in Files.com exactly as they arrived from each custodian, so the desk can pull the file behind a months-old risk run whenever a question comes up.

And DBi got there without asking a single counterparty to change its delivery infrastructure or process. BBH, State Street and the rest deliver today exactly as they always have. Files.com built the permanence on DBi's side of every connection, operated by the people who use the data.