Cogent Consulting, founded in 1983, specializes in financial and corporate technology solutions.

• In the 1980s, it developed solutions that have become industry standards in oil, gas and mineral extraction, university administration, and manufacturing.
• In the 1990s, it acquired the Accounting Software Division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, expanding its product usage to 2,000 installations in 64 countries.
• Starting in the year 2000, Cogent began focusing exclusively on commission management and compliance solutions for Wall Street.
• In 2009, joined ConvergEx, a leading provider of investment and execution technology solutions.

Total Commission Control

For decades, institutional money managers for pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds (the buyside) were dependent on institutional brokerage and research firms (the sell-side) for virtually everything.

The only place the buy-side could trade large amounts of shares or obtain investment research was through the large sell-side brokerage firms.  Commission rates were relatively static and money managers accepted the bundled research at face value. Boutiques were paid with order flow and soft dollar brokers were liable for services from third-party research providers.

The world has changed.  New regulations, more resources available for trading and research, and demands for transparency have motivated the buy-side to increase control and document the more than $12 billion they spend annually on sell-side trade execution and investment research.

To that end, Cogent Consulting has developed an easy-to-use, but powerful suite of web-based technologies that for the first time give the buy-side the ability to exercise Total Commission Management™ over their client’s valuable commissions.  Concurrently, Cogent also has developed a series of similarly easy-to-use, web-based products that help the sell-side interact with its buy-side tools.

Worldwide Installed Base

Operating from its global headquarters in Summit, New Jersey, Cogent provides commission management solutions at more than 100 locations for clients around the world with aggregate assets under management of more than $5 trillion.

These clients include many of the leading names in the industry, such as AIM Management Group, Inc. (Houston), Bank of America’s Columbia Management Group, LLC (Boston), Franklin Templeton, Inc. (San Mateo), Highbridge Capital Management, LLC (New York City), ING Groep N.V. (Amsterdam), Marsico Capital Management, L.L.C. (Denver), and Aviva’s Morley Fund Management Group Limited (London).