Westwood Holdings Group

Westwood Holdings Group Modernizes Operations With Ridgeline

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Westwood Holdings Group is a publicly traded investment management and wealth management firm serving institutional, intermediary, and private wealth clients.

For Westwood, the need for a new platform became clear at the start of every day. The firm’s previous system relied on overnight processes for reporting and performance work, but those processes did not always finish successfully. “Every morning you came in and wondered what was going to be broken,” says Kari Seanz, director of portfolio operations and performance at Westwood.

The problem was not isolated to the operations team. When a system fails regularly, it affects how quickly the firm can respond, how confidently teams can work, and how clients experience the business. “If you tell your clients that you have a bad system, how does that reflect on you as a company?” says Genie Seymour, senior operations analyst.

Westwood began looking for a platform that could give the firm a more dependable foundation. That’s when they reached out to Ridgeline. “We met a lot of the top people and we just felt really comfortable right away that these folks were subject matter experts and they seemed like they had a real northstar with respect to where they were going,” says Brian Casey, CEO.

That confidence had to hold up against the complexity of Westwood’s business. The firm trades fixed income and works with multiple derivative instrument types, including futures, swaps, and foreign exchange products. During its diligence process, the team paid close attention to whether Ridgeline could deliver the capabilities it promised and keep pace with Westwood’s needs.

Shaun Neumann, managing director of operations and trading, was skeptical that Ridgeline could deliver the scale and volume of its roadmap. But the platform continued to prove itself. “Each quarter came and went and Ridgeline had delivered what they said that they were going to deliver,” says Shaun. “From our perspective, it couldn’t have been a better experience.”

The same combination of structure and openness carried into implementation. Ridgeline brought a clear plan for the work, while making room for Westwood’s expertise to shape the result. The team could see what was being built, test how it worked, and provide input along the way.

“Ridgeline came in with a plan for implementation. They knew exactly what they needed to do, but they were also very collaborative with us,” says Genie. “Ridgeline wants our opinions on how the system works. They want to show us, ‘this is what we’ve built so far. What do you think about it?’”

The partnership is giving Westwood more flexibility in the business it can pursue. “We’ve been able to take on more clients that might have more specific needs that we couldn’t have solved for before,” says Kari.

As Westwood looks toward an AI-enabled future, the firm sees technology as a way to reduce the time spent on routine work and give its people more space for the work that depends on experience and judgment.

“The industry’s changed a lot since I started and as we march into this AI age, I find it something that is going to change our lives in a good way,” says Brian. “It allows us more time to spend with our customers, analyze companies, use our judgment, and in terms of the efficiencies that we can see in the years ahead, the sky is the limit.”

About Ridgeline

Ridgeline is the AI-native investment management platform built on the idea that human talent is too valuable to do the work that technology could handle. With over $750B in assets committed to the platform, Ridgeline unifies the front, middle, and back office on a single, real-time platform so routine work happens quietly in the background. Ridgeline has teams in New York, the Bay Area, Reno, and Dublin, and has been recognized by Forbes as a "Best Startup Employer," by Global Financial Market Review for "Best Use of AI in Finance," and by The Software Report as a "Top 100 Software Company." Learn more at ridgeline.ai.

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