In Australia, Vanguard Investments, BT Wrap, Barclays Global Investors, AUSMAQ and National Custodian Services have signed the dotted line, marking SWIFTNet Fund's first major entrance to the market. To many, this may seem surprising given the worldclass superannuation system that exists in Australia and the large hedge funds industry.
ôOver the years, we have been considering our potential value to the Australian funds market, but were advised by industry players to first prove our solution in Europe and North Asia,ö says Bill Gourlay, global head of sales, funds, at SWIFT. ôWhat we found interesting when we were down in Australia in May this year was that this market is very advanced at the investment level, but to our surprise, there was very little automation behind this to provide a suitable operational solution.ö
According to Gourlay, the process of penetrating Australia began when SWIFT commenced discussions with between 10 to 15 of the major funds players and realised through its business case review studies - which involves analysing the operational processes of a client - that manual intervention throughout the entire funds transactional lifecycle (order, confirmation, pricing, reconciliation and exception processing) was still very common.
ôIt appears that previous attempts to automate the Australian funds market had struggled and we believe that with our entrance this will be dramatically improved,ö he says. ôThere was a lot of paper in the system and a heavy reliance on fax and telephone confirmations.ö
The Australian firms joining SWIFTNet Funds are not small players either. Vanguard Investments is the worldÆs second largest fund manager, while BT Wrap holds nearly 4% of the Australian market. Largely unknown outside of Australia, National Custodian Services holds A$180 billion ($133.8 billion) in domestic assets, which comprise of roughly half of its total assets.
On top of these recent commitments, SWIFT has also signed up two other key names in Australia to its funds service prior to Sibos, namely Barclays Global Investors Australia and AUSMAQ, and is confident that it will attract a significant number of other Australian fund managers in the near term.
Regionally, Australia is not the only market where SWIFTNet Funds is making headway. SWIFT has earmarked Taiwan as the next Asian market where it expects to see live traffic this year, following in the footsteps of Hong Kong and Singapore earlier this year. It also plans to explore opportunities in Korea in the future.
ôThe funds business in Asia-Pacific is a huge focus for us and will continue to be,ö says Gourlay. ôWe can provide fund houses distributing throughout Asia-Pacific with scalability through automation, which significantly reduces risks, improves audit trails, and drives down operational costs. These wins prove that we are now a truly global solution.ö
This announcement follows a period of significant success for SWIFTNet Funds globally, which has seen other names such as Northern Trust, Investors Bank & Trust, and FundSERV sign up in the past month. Building out the experience gained in the funds haven of Luxembourg, 57 messages are now being used in a live environment by an ever-expanding list of investors that include Fidelity, Banca Intesa, Citco, HSBC and BNP Paribas across the globe.
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