Calastone Limited, the only independent cross-border transaction network for the mutual funds industry, today announced that Northern Trust a leading provider of investment management, asset and fund administration, banking solutions and fiduciary services for corporations, institutions and affluent individuals worldwide is connected to Calastone’s settlement and matching service.
Northern Trust and Barings will immediately benefit from the efficiencies of Calastone’s net settlement and trade order matching service. Northern Trust’s client, Baring Asset Management – which was the first firm to connect to Calastone’s transaction network in May 2008 – will reap the advantages of full Straight-Through-Processing (STP) and business flow processing automation throughout the entire transaction lifecycle from order entry through to settlement.
Daniel Llewellyn, Director of Market Innovation at Calastone said, “We’re delighted to see that our primary market model continues to be adopted by the key participants in the UK industry. We welcome the addition of Transfer Agents who play a significant role in the processing of mutual fund orders and the resultant administration. We believe that the introduction of Northern Trust and Baring Asset Management to our settlement model further demonstrates that the UK market is being serviced correctly and efficiently by the Calastone settlement service. Every new participant using our settlement model will further lead to full STP for the entire industry and ultimately benefits the end investor.”
Karen Hamilton, product management EMEA at Northern Trust added, “Northern Trust currently provides fund administration services to more than 4,000 funds, with assets of more than US$870 billion across the globe and continues to look at ways to enhance our solutions to our clients, responding to their unique and changing requirements. STP will bring increased operational control and reduced risk for the industry and Calastone’s innovative settlement service supports and complement this requirement and those of the UK mutual fund industry.”
Peter Arnold, Head of Fund Services, Performance Measurement and Business Liaison at Baring Asset Management added, “We have been Calastone’s first order routing customer and have been benefiting from transaction automation and straight through processing (STP), for more than three years. Working with Northern Trust, our connectivity to the Calastone settlement model is expected to help us settle our transactions more efficiently which will be of further benefit to our end investors.”
Julia Streets / Abby Munson
Streets Consulting
+44 (0)20 7959 2235