Integrated Financial Arrangements plc, the company that operates the Transact wrap service, has selected Calastone as the provider of its electronic, interoperable re-registration solution.
Calastone, the global fund transaction network, has been selected by Transact to provide it with a fully interoperable, electronic re-registration solution.
Transact, along with a number of other market leading organisations, took part in the original working group to develop the Calastone re-registration service, and has now chosen the solution to automate its own re-registration process.
Under FSA regulations it is compulsory for platforms to offer re-registration of assets. Whilst these regulations do not stipulate that this process must be automated, it is widely acknowledged that an electronic straight through processing (STP) solution is preferable. Calastone’s solution gives the market the ability to move towards same day re-registration.
The service, based on the requirements of a wide range of market participants as identified in the working group, enables the transfer of legal title in fund units between nominees. It enables STP for “in specie” transfer of assets and provides full visibility to all parties during the lifecycle of the transfer.
Calastone’s re-registration solution allows distributors, platforms and fund managers to automate the transfer of assets. Additionally, Calastone will be able to communicate client re-registration instructions to other market participants not on the Calastone Network thus enabling Calastone clients to obtain full market coverage via an interoperable model.
Ian Taylor, CEO of Integrated Financial Arrangements, said: “Calastone has a strong track-record of delivering flexible and scalable solutions that help to reduce risk and costs without requiring additional software spend. It has worked with different sectors of the market in order to deliver a product that is effective, easy to use and enables market participants to communicate with each other in order to automate the processes of re-registration. We welcome the fact that someone has delivered a cost effective system that can transfer legal title in seconds. This can only be a good thing for the end investor.”
Dan Llewellyn, Managing Director for Product at Calastone, said: “We are very grateful for the support of Transact which is one of our key customers, and are fortunate to have such a proactive client base that is always pressing us to deliver new services to help automate business processes. Electronic re-registration has been proven and we are keen to expand the service to other customers in the UK and other domiciles. Phase two of the Calastone re-registration service is to enable our clients the ability to transfer other asset classes including equities, pensions, bonds and SIPPS .”
Julia Streets / Abby Munson
Streets Consulting
+44 (0)20 7959 2235