Barclays Global Investors (BGI), an Australia-based investment manager, has gone ‘live’ with automated funds transaction processing using SWIFT Funds. Reportedly, it joins local fund market participants HSBC sub-custody and clearing, RBC Dexia Investor Services and Vanguard Investments Australia, which have recently adopted automated transaction processing to replace some of the 15,000 wholesale fund application, redemption, confirmation and reporting faxes shared daily among Australia’s funds community.
Michael Garrett, head of regional operations, BGI Australia, said: “SWIFT project allows them to focus on providing a better service for their clients and reducing the errors and risks associated with manual processing. The SWIFT Funds solution is an enabler of our drive to continually explore and implement efficient, risk-reduced processing of client transactions. Automating these transactions frees up our staff to answer client queries and focus on our clients in a pro-active manner rather than be reactive. We can also leave our system running to accept and process orders, knowing that the details are accurate while we monitor for any exceptions.”
Peter Snodgrass, head of securities services, HSBC Securities Services Australia, said: “We are pleased to add Barclays Global Investors as a counterparty with whom we can automate our managed funds transactions across SWIFT. We are now seeing the significant benefits of automation with further reduction in processing risks, allowing us to enhance service to our clients. We look forward to working with other parties as they join us in this initiative.”
Tim Hamer, securities commercial manager for funds in Australia & New Zealand, SWIFT, said: “Orders received via SWIFT require little or no manual intervention and initial acceptance processing can be completed in seconds. Manually processed orders such as those that come in via fax, on the other hand, require an average of four minutes of checking and can tie up people for several hours if there is a problem.”
