"This is a breakthrough solution that gives investment managers a secure, automated portal from which they can directly access MAS to exchange account information with their sponsor partners and begin to benefit from the efficiencies inherent in the service," said Ann Bergin, DTCC Wealth Management Services managing director and general manager.

Supported by DTCC's global infrastructure, the MAS platform streamlines communications throughout the lifecycle of a managed account and links, through its one-to-many architecture, an unlimited number of business partners on either side of a transaction. It allows users to handle higher account volumes at lower cost; invest customers' funds quickly; decrease manual processing; and lower operational risk.

DTCC plans to launch MAS Portal in the third quarter of 2009 and has selected Peridrome Corporation's DashWM solution suite to power the new service.

"We're excited about the potential for streamlining communications through a single gateway to make servicing managed accounts more efficient," Gib Veconi, president of Peridrome, explained. "Managers won't have to monitor multiple sponsor portals to keep up with daily volumes, and sponsors will be able to eliminate the cost of maintaining proprietary connections to communicate with those managers."

Stuart Feld, managing director, UBS Wealth Management, added, "DTCC's goal all along has been to make the Managed Accounts Service all inclusive. Their user interface is the last piece of the puzzle, as it will benefit investment managers who don't have large IT resources to build a direct link and eliminate reliance on myriad sponsor-centric proprietary applications to process the operational portion of their business."

Using a digital certificate, investment managers will connect to MAS Portal through DTCC WebDirect, an interface that gives participants secure, direct access over the Internet to services provided by DTCC's subsidiaries. es. Through MAS Portal, users will, for the first time, have immediate access to an open, industry-wide communications infrastructure that will not only support sponsors and managers, but service providers to the industry, as well. In addition to sending, receiving and managing messages, users will be able to download reports and data extracts through the portal.

Franklin Templeton's Gina Scavetta noted: "The launch of this new DTCC platform is an important step towards the adoption of communication standards and should help alleviate a lot of the operational complexities and redundancies that the industry faces today." Scavetta is vice president and director of Operations - Separately Managed Account Operations, Franklin Templeton Portfolio Advisors, Inc.

DTCC and The Money Management Institute (MMI) have been working together over the past three years to build a foundation for operational efficiency in the managed accounts area. The MMI Managed Account Solutions Standards (MASS) Committee develops messaging standards with compatible schemas by DTCC to support the range of business processes necessary to open, maintain, manage and administer managed accounts.

Peridrome's Veconi, co-chair of the MASS Committee, added, "Introducing this new user interface makes the movement toward communication standards much more real. It has moved out of the conceptual stage."

MAS is an offering of DTCC Solutions LLC, a DTCC subsidiary.