Green light for JV
A networking system that has captured 90 per cent of the institutional funds man-agement market in Canada has officially landed in Australia.
A networking system that has captured 90 per cent of the institutional funds man-agement market in Canada has officially landed in Australia.
FMCNet, a 50/50 joint venture between Australia’s Permanent Trustees and Can-ada’s Financial Models Company, was launched last week with high hopes from its backers.
Permanent Trustees managing director Paul Lahiff says he hopes to emulate the system’s 90 per cent penetration in the Canadian market within a few years.
FMCNet is a three-way communication network that links fund managers with brokers and custodians to boost back office efficiency when fund managers trade in shares, currency and fixed interest.
In Australia to launch the new system, FMC’s Canadian managing director Stamos Katotakis says the system is the first to offer three-way communication.
“Other systems offer links between fund managers and the brokers they use. While this goes some way to building up transaction efficiency, there is still a lot of man-ual work to complete the transaction,” he says.
“FMCNet offers straight through processing and should help to bring down settle-ment times which have recently dropped from T+5 to T+3 and are sure to drop further in the future. Systems operating at the moment simply won’t be able to handle the reduced transaction times efficiently.”
In an effort to expand the system rapidly, FMCNet will be installed at no cost to the broker, custodian or fund manager. Instead, they will be charged by the trans-action, as they are in Canada.
FMCNet will be distributed in Australia by Investment Software Solutions; the company set up by the joint venture agreement signed between Permanent and FMC in June.
Former Jacques Martin Group managing director Frank Sebestyen will head up the operations. Sebestyen was instrumental in the formation of the joint venture.
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