Altus is pleased to announce that its market-leading Straight-Through-Processing (STP) Trading solution AIG has been successfully integrated into ITM's PenScope pension administration system to deliver the first end-to-end STP solution.
PenScope clients can now transmit DC investment instructions to fund managers via AIG and receive settlement, holding and price information completely automatically. ITM Director Maurice Titley commented 'The integration of PenScope and Altus Instruction Gateway is another example of ITM's approach of bringing innovative solutions to the administration marketplace.'
Despite its complexity, with multiple stages of checks and approvals spanning administration and finance departments, the process of investing members' money with fund managers is generally paper based with manual controls. The immediate benefits of adopting AIG include better controls, improved auditability, the elimination of transcription errors and reduced administrative effort. The result is an improved service to clients with instant up to date price and holding information and the potential for faster and more frequent transactions.
PenScope's DC processing capabilities now link directly to AIG to provide Straight-Through-Processing, which enables customers to further reduce operational and "out of market" risks, and achieve real efficiencies in administration operations. The in-built controls and unit reconciliation functions within PenScope utilise actual fund holdings from AIG, and customers can rest assured that DC schemes are fully reconciled at any point in time.
According to Titley, 'ITM strongly believes the market demands for end-to-end STP solutions will rise still further with the advent of NEST and auto-enrolment, and we look forward to working with Altus on further customer installations over the coming year.'