Calastone builds scale for reporting solution that reconciles investor holdings across funds and platforms
Calastone, the largest global funds network, continues to enhance the benefits of automation across Australia’s managed funds sector as industry participation for its reporting solution grows.
Australia’s largest registry provider, OneVue, which represents 42 fund manager clients that are trading with platforms through Calastone, is now sending monthly Statements of Holdings and Transactions to enabled platforms on the Calastone network. The added connectivity sees Calastone automating over 60% of monthly reports issued by fund managers on its network.
Ross Fox, Managing Director, Head of Australia and New Zealand at Calastone, commented: “The fact that the majority of Calastone connected fund managers are now using our Reporting capability shows that industry participants are embracing and benefiting from new and improved ways of managing their fiduciary responsibilities across front and back offices.
“Calastone’s interoperable Reporting solution converts statement information into a single file that allows fund managers and platforms to respectively send and receive monthly unit information, eliminating the need for copious emails, PDFs, faxes and manual portals that drag efficiency.
“With OneVue joining other leading registries in advocating electronic reporting, the question around why manual practices persist grows louder within the industry,” Fox said.
Richard Harris-Smith, Deputy Group CEO at OneVue, commented: “Manual reporting has been a major source of risk and drag in the managed funds value chain that can only be fully eliminated once all participants adopt automation. Until this happens there will be undue errors, data security risks, delays, and costs that unjustifiably inhibit innovation and best practice. Platforms can now instantly digest and identify unit holding discrepancies with us, closing the timing gap on transaction queries that could otherwise take months to resolve,” he said.
Calastone’s Reporting solution is expected to yield greater benefits as more participants move away from manual processing, as seen with Calastone’s Order Routing solution, which now automates the vast majority of wholesale managed fund transactions between platforms and fund managers. These participants need to opt in for Reporting functionality in order to send and receive monthly statements electronically over the network.
“Manual processing that persists today needs to be reviewed against rising demands for accuracy, speed, security and transparency around processes and outcomes. The faster and more accurate we can make reporting within the system, the more time and focus we can apply to delivering better client experiences and outcomes,” Fox said.
