FA Solutions seeks new ways of easing the workload of its customers. The financial markets and related requirements are evolving rapidly, and we continuously develop our product to stay ahead of this.
Automation is usually a key component when looking to increase productivity, from capacity to speed. However, there are still many areas within fund management where the manual activities and the associated risk of human error can be found. This is surprising when you consider we are in a world that keeps talking about the benefits of artificial intelligence and how it can help firms to become more productive.
One labour-intensive area of fund processing is the trading and settlement process. This becomes even more challenging when dealing with globally diversified counterparties and asset types. At this time, corporations and their branches in different regions tend to follow their own policy of accepting and delivering trade orders and settlement instructions. Usually this is driven by their technology stack. Therefore, in order to automate processes and establish connections, one corporation needs to manage a separate connection with each counterpary – this approach is known as a point-to-point connection. Though there are certain standards to ease the process, such as SWIFT, there are still differences in the technical arrangement. The devil is always in the detail.
At FA Solutions, we have seen that the only way to manage the disruption is to rely on experts. Point-to-point connections are rarely the best use of time and resources, especially for industry-wide challenges when many different counterparties need to connect. Luckily, there are experts out there for this specific reason.
Case example:
FA Solutions has introduced various partners along the way for different business purposes. Calastone is a perfect example of a company which can strengthen the value chain together with FA Solutions. There is a connectivity between FA Platform and Calastone which is the largest global fund transaction network. Specifically, Calastone’s Distributed Market Infrastructure (DMI) - the only live funds industry blockchain infrastructure - connects fund distributors, fund managers, transfer agencies, custodians, fund accountants and other relevant players so they all have a shared view of trade and settlement positions across all counterparties. For distributors and fund managers, it also automates the costly and time-consuming tasks, such as reconciliations and the forecasting of net cash payments with all counterparties.
This combination of the platforms can be powerful for various businesses such as:
- IFAs and Family Offices with fund-based rebalancing strategies
- Fund Managers and Distributors for fund distribution
- Fund of funds for streamlining trade routing and settlement processes
These are examples of potential use cases and there are more possibilities out there. If you would like to discuss these possibilities further with us, let us know. Reach out to sales@fasolutions.com or leave your email address below and we will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
