Skandia UK has signed with Brown Brothers Harriman's Infomediary platform to connect to cross border fund providers and transfer agents over the Swift network.
Keith Haberlin, head of European sales for Infomediary says BBH has identified the automation of investment fund processing as a potential growth area for the bureau-based service. The firm is currently participating in the SwiftNet funds early adopter programme, which aims to bring Swift-based XML messaging to the European and Asian funds markets.
Says Haberlin: "By insulating customers from the various standards and solutions in the cross border space, our clients can achieve STP without the burden of purchasing, installing and maintaining the requisite infrastructure directly.”
Skandia's UK operations have been using the EMXco platform since 2002 to automate trades and confirmations with UK domestic fund providers.
"Skandia has obtained significant success through its use of EMX to automate trading principally with UK fund providers," says Paul Miller, head of investment administration at Skandia in Southampton. "Strategically the objective is to achieve the same level of automation across all its European trading activities, both for UK operations and ultimately for other parts of Skandia. To do so, it was deemed necessary to have Swift capability."