DSTi develops new unit pricing tool
Ian Mathieson
DST International (DSTi) has introduced a new feature to its HiPortfolio/3 Investment Accounting Solution to help financial services institutions more easily and accurately manage the task of unit pricing.
The additional attribute to the accounting application, called Unit Pricing Workbench, has been designed specifically for managers of unit trusts and people who provide custodial services for unit trust managers.
The enhancement has been designed to allow them to manage the unit pricing process throughout the pricing cycle on an ‘exception’ basis, which will in turn enable real time system monitoring.
“Essentially, the Workbench, among other things, allows you to create and maintain a benchmark index and measure the performance of a unit trust against that benchmark index,” DSTi chief executive Ian Mathieson said.
Users of the new service will now be able to develop a consolidated view of unit pricing functions from start to finish.
Mathieson said: “Investors often query the performance of a unit trust and it can take investment managers up to two hours to generate reports. The new Unit Pricing Workbench provides a Unit Trust Variance Report for instant analysis of the unit trust’s assets once a price is calculated.
“Furthermore, any organisation that can provide more accurate, substantiated and timely information to an investor’s queries regarding unit prices is always going to lead in the area of client servicing,” he added.
DSTi added the feature to its existing accounting package in response to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s investigation into best practice unit pricing systems, which found unit pricing calculation errors tended to be very large and, as such, very costly.
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