Nick Boudrie

State Street Corporation has announced the appointment of Australia’s LAB Group to introduce electronic investor onboarding capabilities for its fund manager clients in Australia, using LAB Group’s platform.

With LAB Group’s platform, the customer onboarding experience for State Street clients will be significantly enhanced. It will accelerate investor registration and enable electronic identity verification for individuals, companies and trusts. The LAB process harnesses numerous Australian government and other verified databases, supported by dynamic online forms, multi-party digital signing and document upload facilities.

“With this appointment, State Street is furthering our commitment to delivering best-in-class technology and support to our clients,” said Daniel Cheever, head of State Street Institutional Services, Australia. “The industry need for automating the onboarding process has become increasingly acute and we are confident this technology will enhance the experience for our clients and their investors.”

The enhanced State Street transfer agency platform will offer its fund manager clients the flexibility to build bespoke white label forms, which their investors can access directly from their websites. State Street’s fund manager clients will be able to view both “in progress” and submitted investor applications to monitor incoming fund flows.

LAB’s technology is standardised to seamlessly integrate into multiple customer relationship management (CRM) systems and industry registry platforms. It also satisfies the Australian government’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulatory requirements.

“It’s important that our fund manager clients can now offer a seamless online experience for their new customers,” said Cheever. “This includes not just access to services and products in the most efficient way, but a commitment to security.”

“LAB’s compliance and regulatory expertise coupled with our goal to standardise onboarding for the financial services sector is delivering mutual benefits to our ecosystem of clients, who are looking for more innovative methods to bring on consumers whilst meeting constantly evolving regulatory hurdles,” said Nick Boudrie, CEO of LAB Group. “Standardisation allows LAB to efficiently upgrade its platform and we’re excited to see this scale with State Street across its fund manager client base.”

Along with security and improved efficiency, the benefits of the LAB Group solution include scalability of the client/investor onboarding process.

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ACSA announce 2014 award recipients.

The Australian Custodial Services Association (ACSA) has announced four winners of the 2014 ACSA Awards, recognising outstanding contribution to the Australian custody and investment administration industry.

The 2014 ACSA award winners are:

• Marian Azer, Head of Global Funds Services, Product for J.P. Morgan Investor Services Australia and New Zealand,
• Daniel Cheever, Vice President and Head of Superannuation of State Street Global Services,
• Darryll Rogers, Manager of Superannuation and Regulatory Change, NAB Asset Servicing, and
• Paul Talbot, Business Development Manager of OneVue Fund Services.

The winners of the industry achievement awards were announced on Wednesday night at the 2014 Investment Administration Conference, produced by Conexus Financial in association with ACSA.

The ACSA Awards recognise individuals who have made outstanding contributions and demonstrated a high level of professionalism, knowledge and commitment to Australia’s custody and investment administration industry.

ACSA Chair David Braga commended the achievements of the award recipients in the past year, and acknowledged the ongoing hard work of the ACSA Working Groups.

“ACSA’s achievements are reliant on the collective voluntary efforts of staff from its member organisations. For this, I would like to congratulate and thank Marian, Daniel, Darryll and Paul for their substantial contributions during 2013 to the custody industry,” Braga said

Darryll Rogers, Marian Azer and Daniel Cheever were recognised for their outstanding contribution in the Stronger Super Task Force which was formed to facilitate understanding of the government’s Stronger Super reforms across the custodial industry, co-ordinating dialogue between APRA, custodians and the superannuation industry.

Over the past year, the Stronger Super Task Force achieved an industry standard to investment classification in line with APRA’s guidelines to prevent misunderstandings from varying interpretations. The task force also made considerable progress in reaching a consensus around issues such as achieving adequate detailed investment information for fund look-throughs, and treatment of derivatives and currency overlays.

Paul Talbot was recognised for his significant role in the promoting the efficiencies of automated processing in the managed funds industry, a cause he has advocated in his role as Chairman of the Securities Market Practice Group since 2011. Mr Talbot’s ongoing efforts to highlight the reduced risks and costs through automation contributed to the increasing popularity of straight through processing in the Australian managed funds industry.

“Through the ongoing dedication and collective efforts of our members, ACSA will continue to contribute to innovation and efficiency in the investment administration industry, and provide international best-practice for members, clients and the financial services community at large,” Mr Braga concluded.

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