For immediate release

EFAMA updates its recommendations for Fund Processing with its latest report

New section on fintech and blockchain added

Brussels, 15 October 2018 - The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has today published its fifth Fund Processing Report, presenting recommendations put forward to the funds industryby its Committee onTrading, Trade Reporting and Market Infrastructures. The report, first published in 2005, still encompasses the full scope of activities from the initial report but will now also include new sections aiming to enable increased efficiency in fund processing.

The report puts forward recommendations in the following key areas:

Supporting the Capital Market Union and embracing technology

The updated Fund Processing Standardisation Report's recommendations build on the EC driven European Post Trade Forum (EPTF)'s recognition of EFAMA's role in fund processing and the aim to promote more efficient and resilient market infrastructures in the EU as part of the Capital Markets Union project. In this fourth edition, EFAMA offers several general and specific recommendations to facilitate and improve the level of automation and straight through processing (STP) within the European funds industry.
These recommendations include the need for widespread adoption of a revised and more flexible fund reference and sales data message as an industry standard, the use of ISO standard identifiers, such as BICs, LEIs and ISINs, and the continued promotion of ISO 20022 as the single European message standard for fund messaging.

EFAMA has also taken a leading role in bringing together market participants to discuss developments in FinTech, such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Distributed Ledger technology (DLT) to input to its recommendations. In the section of the report dedicated to this topic, EFAMA recommends that automation in the API and DLT areas to be based on open global ISO standards.

Remaining a catalyst for change and building a truly global approach

In spite of significant progress made since 2005, many inefficiencies in fund processing are still apparent in the cross-border distribution of funds. The adoption of ISO 17442 by participants and infrastructure providers has certainly improved what is a very important part of the European fund industry, which offers UCITS beyond Europe, particularly Asia and Latin America, but the importance of a truly, homogenous global approach to fund processing remains as high as ever.

EFAMA encourages national initiatives for the improvement of cross-border and domestic investment in funds such as in France and Italy, which demonstrate the ongoing demand for fund processing automation based on standardisation. In that context, it points out that only when the necessary changes are implemented by all industry players will the benefits be delivered to the market as a whole. They identify the benefits of a global approach as follows:

Greater efficiency. Improved scalability of operations and reduced costs, resulting in greater profitability for the players involved with lower costs to investors;
Reduced operational risk through the elimination and replacement of manual re-keying of orders and other data by straight-through processing;
Enhanced service through improved response times and standardized interfaces

The report also outlines the continued need for data and monitoring tools to assess the take up of automation in fund order processing and the adoption of ISO standards.

Peter De Proft, Director General of EFAMA, commented: With the fifth iteration of our flagship FPSG report, EFAMA is renewing its commitment to lead the funds industry's efforts to streamline fund processing. If we want to build a long-lasting CMU project, efforts to remove barriers within fund processing globally must continue.One of our key goals for the next few years is to ensure that European fund managers remain as efficient and as cost effective as possible in the context of an increasingly globalized and technology driven financial services industry, which is eager to evolve with the trends that impact it."

For media enquiries, please contact:

Peter De Proft, Director General
Telephone: +32 (0) 2 513 39 69
E-mail: info@efama.org

Ends

Notes to editors:

About the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA):
EFAMA is the representative association for the European investment management industry, which represents 28-member associations and 62 corporate members. At end 2017, total net assets of European investment funds reached EUR 15.6 trillion. Close to 32,000 of these funds were UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities) and close to 28,300 of these funds were AIFs (Alternative Investment Funds). Including discretionary mandates, third-party regulated asset managers managed EUR 25 trillion in Europe at end 2017. For more information about EFAMA, please visit www.efama.org.

Clikc here todownload a copy of the Report.