All ten promoters endorse Euroclear's new approach to entice greater use of FundSettle, the low cost, STP platform for fund transaction settlement and asset servicing. By sharing the challenge of convincing the remaining 50% of the market's distributors to automate through cost and service incentives, this partnership will move the market closer to fully automated fund-transaction processing, and save the industry EUR 300 million per year.

The following fund promoters support the initiative by making their FundSettle-eligible funds available to distributors with cost and service-level incentives:

• AllianceBernstein
• Goldman Sachs Asset Management
• Invesco
• JPMorgan Asset Management
• Pictet Asset Management
• Pioneer Investments
• Robeco Asset Management
• Schroders Investment Management
• Société Générale Asset Management
• Virmont SARL (formerly Alken Asset Management)

All asset servicing and custody-related services for distributors using the new FundSettle offer are free of charge. Fund distributors using FundSettle's automated STP services pay as low as EUR 0.75 per transaction to route and settle a subscription or redemption order, compared with an average fee of EUR 7. Furthermore, distributors are able to rationalise their back offices by using a single entry point to FundSettle, gain greater scalability and lower levels of risk through automation.

Ivan Nicora, Director and Head of Investment Fund Product Management at Euroclear, said: "With the economic climate as it is, firms are placing even greater importance on controlling costs and are realising that manual fund processing is an avoidable expense. FundSettle's joint efforts with fund promoters will see more distributors capture all of the benefits of automation - cost reduction, risk control and scalability - while saving up to 85% of the cost today. Our work continues with a number of other leading promoters to improve processing automation in our industry."

Laurent Moser, Head of Transfer Agency at Pictet, commented: "A firm such as ours, with EUR 230 billion under management, is compelled to find the most cost-efficient and risk-controlled service for the needs of our institutional and private banking clients. With FundSettle, we have aligned ourselves with a service offering that provides the exceptional quality that our clients constantly expect from us."

Heinz Fischer, Head of Global Network Management at Crédit Suisse, said: "Euroclear's drive towards full automation is a positive step for the thirdparty fund distribution landscape. FundSettle is an important innovation, increasing STP rates and transparency along the processing chain. This ultimately increases client satisfaction thanks to reduced risk and more competitive fees."