The Fund/Speed electronic platform acts as an information gateway through which fund companies can send and receive information from a national network of reps and planners, using Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Previously, the only way financial reps and planners could obtain information on their clients’ mutual fund transactions and portfolios was manually via phone and fax or through multiple fund or transfer agent systems.

Ann Bergin, managing director for mutual fund services at NSCC, says: "What Fund/Speed does is provide a 'missing link,' using automation and the Web to bring the mutual fund manufacturer and distributor closer together. The service will strategically help funds grow their business partnerships because it’s so much easier to reach more distributors."

The first phase of the Fund/Speed launch involves the transmission of account inquiry information via the link. This information includes: customers’ financial history, such as purchases, redemptions, distributions, adjustments; fund position summaries and details, such as the accounts owned by a shareholder, number of shares and market value, and registration information; money transfer instructions; contingent deferred sales charge information, for example, free shares, CDSC shares, percentages and hypothetical calculations; Rights of Accumulation/Letter of Intent information; and information on pending.

Financial reps and planners can request information on multiple funds in a customer’s portfolio through their distributor, such as a broker/dealer firm, or through a service provider which, in either case, must be an NSCC member. That firm forwards the request to Fund/Speed, which then distributes the request to all the funds automatically. The information is then channeled back from the funds through Fund/Speed, to the service provider or broker/dealer and, ultimately, to the reps and planners.

Currently, more than 50 fund companies are participating in Fund/Speed. The first service provider to develop a link to Fund/Speed is AdvisorCentral, a joint venture among Putnam Investments, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and PFPC Inc.

Kenneth Rathgeber, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Fidelity Investments Institutional Services (FIIS), comments: "We now have the important capability to tie financial planners and the funds together directly in a more automated way. This is an opportunity to standardize the process for requesting and supplying account level information between FIIS and our distribution partners, while reducing costs and increasing operating efficiencies at the same time."

In the second stage of the launch, scheduled for later this year, Fund/Speed will be used by reps and planners to send fund purchase, redemption and exchange orders to NSCC’s members for routing - through Fund/Speed – into NSCC’s Fund/Serv system, where the orders will be processed. Actual settlement will be completed outside the clearing corporation process, by the distributors and funds directly.