Technology advisory firm of the year: KWA Analytics

Energy Risk Awards 2025: Tech adviser designs entire trading and risk systems landscape ahead of global hedge fund launch

Phil Walsh, KWA Analytics

When KWA Analytics was approached to advise on technology needs for a major hedge fund launch in 2024, the client had a general idea of the asset classes they wanted to trade but had yet to hire a full team of portfolio managers. So, KWA was tasked with “defining a trading and risk management landscape that could scale rapidly” as portfolio managers came onboard, says Will O’Brien, KWA Analytics’ executive vice-president of sales, Americas.

The client needed a platform that could support cross-asset trading and KWA was enlisted to ensure it could support all listed commodities products and provide real-time risk analytics prior to fund launch. “Our depth of quantitative development resources ensured that we could complement their lean teams and deliver rapid deployments on internal custom builds,” O’Brien continues. “We were able to coordinate the global rollout of an enterprise trading and risk analytics solution by fund launch in July 2024, in under five months.”

Will O’Brien, KWA Analytics

KWA’s platform covered more than 500 commodities products and fed into the client’s overall fund system for all asset classes including equities, bonds, asset-backed securities and foreign exchange. Ram Meenakshisundaram, senior vice-president of quantitative analytics at KWA Analytics, says the advisory firm’s capital markets knowledge enabled it to identify potential overlaps, co-dependencies and conflicts immediately.

“KWA’s expertise in every commodity market globally made this task achievable,” Meenakshisundaram continues. “It did not matter if it was North American gas and power, Chinese coal, ags or metals, we have the deep domain knowledge from prior implementations. This enabled us to call out the illiquid or more nuanced, complex non-linear products upfront and provide solutions based on prior implementations.”

The client went live with a real-time trading and risk management platform at launch, according to Meenakshisundaram. Its scalable architecture means the hedge fund can continue to add new markets. “It can accurately report key metrics in real time and without the constraints found in traditional energy trading and risk management (ETRM) software systems. This enabled effective trading of more complex products and strategies,” he says.

Other projects that the KWA team worked on over the past year include a new target operating model for the IT support function of a large Middle East-based liquified natural gas trader. KWA also ran a global implementation project for a multinational oil & gas company, which involved designing and building an ETRM for the major’s biofuels, environmental and emissions certificates business.

KWA worked with energy companies including an international oil & gas major, and a multinational food company, on client-specific technology strategies for derivatives reporting changes that came into effect in April 2024 under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation  Regulatory Fitness Programme.

Ram Meenakshisundaram, KWA Analytics

In line with this wide range of projects, KWA has continued to grow its business over the past year and now has 86 customers, five vendor partners and a team of 281 across Europe, North America and Asia. “KWA is continuously investing in attracting, retaining and developing the best people in the market. We also have a unique combination of industry expertise and innovative technology,” says Phil Walsh, director and co-founder of KWA Analytics. Indeed, the firm offers clients access to a proprietary AI assistant, Risk and Operations Systems Expert (KWA – ROSE), which its consultants use for market insights and to help solve complex problems.

“By leveraging KWA – ROSE’s advanced capabilities, we can upskill employees faster, streamline our internal processes and improve our delivery capabilities,” says Jonathan Stochel, director, Americas at KWA Analytics. “This allows us to allocate more time to high-value tasks, such as strategic advisory and complex problem-solving,”

This proprietary solution has also helped KWA boost its AI advisory services to clients so they can implement and optimise their own AI solutions. Given the growing interest in integrating more AI-enabled tools across the energy and commodity trading markets, this is another area in which KWA has supported client needs in 2024, even amid significant market change.