The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) recently published in cooperation with SWIFT, a new report on the evolution of automation and standardisation rates of fund orders received by transfer agents (TAs) in the cross-border fund centres of Luxembourg and Ireland in the first half of 2015.
The report confirms that the automation rate in the fund industry increased to 83.5% in Q2 2015 from 82.6% in Q4 2014.
The report is an on-going campaign by EFAMA and SWIFT to highlight the advancement of automation and standardisation rates of orders of cross-border funds. 29 TAs from Ireland and Luxembourg participated in this survey, representing more than 80% of the total incoming third-party investment funds order volumes in both markets.
The report highlights include:
- The total order volume of cross-border funds increased by 11% to 17.5 million orders in the first half of 2015, from 15.8 million orders in the second half of 2014. The use of ISO messaging standards rose by 3.8 percentages points (p.p.) to 53.2%, while the use of manual processes and proprietary formats (FTP) dropped to 16.5% (-0.9 p.p.) and 30.3% (-2.9 p.p.), respectively, in the same time period.
- The total automation rate of orders processed by Luxembourg TAs reached 81.2% in Q2 2015 compared to 81.3% in Q4 2014. The ISO automation rate increased from 57.9% in Q4 2014 to 64.3% in Q2 2015, while the use of proprietary ftp decreased from 23.4% in Q4 2014 to 16.9% in Q2 2015.
- The total automation rate of orders processed by Irish TAs increased to 88.3% in Q2 2015, from 85.6% in Q4 2014. The percentage of automated orders based on the ISO messaging standards increase to 30.7% in Q2 2015, from 29.5% in Q4 2014.
Peter De Proft, EFAMA Director General, says:
“The findings presented in this mid-year status report confirms the growing use of the ISO messaging standards in the processing of cross-border funds in both Luxembourg and Ireland. Compared to five years ago, overall, the share of orders processed using these standards has increased from 36% to 53%. This is a very positive development which brings greater efficiency funds processing and lower costs.»
Fabian Vandenreydt, Global Head of Securities, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute, SWIFT, adds: “This report indicates the strong focus of the industry towards a more efficient and reliable process in the funds industry. The decrease of FTP usage and manual processing versus adoption of ISO standards keeps on drawing the trends towards automation and cost reduction. SWIFT and EFAMA will pursue their efforts to lower the manual process as much as possible and support the industry where and when needed.»
You can read the report in the following link.