Redi2 Technologies, a leading provider of sophisticated yet simple-to-use fee billing solutions for the global financial services industry, announced that The Money Management Institute's (MMI) MASS (Managed Account Solutions Standards) committee has published new billing messaging standards to improve communication of fee data between investment managers and sponsors, broker-dealers, custodians and other industry participants.
The committee released two new XML-based (eXtensible Markup Language) billing messages. The first provides a statement of the investment manager's services and any fee adjustments. The second includes the details needed to verify the manager's fee for each account, including the identity of the investment sponsor and manager, market values and time period used to calculate the fees.
Development of the billing standards was a joint industry effort led by MMI vice president Gary Jones, with MASS Billing sub-committee co-chairs J.P. Morgan vice president Stephen Boyle and Seth Johnson, CEO of Redi2 Technologies. "Billing is a vital function that benefits from automation and standardization," Johnson explained. "By implementing standardized messaging schemas, users can minimize fee leakage, realize significant cost savings and improve operational efficiency."
The components of the MASS Billing Standards V1.0 include:
* An archive containing the MASS billing message schema.
* A spreadsheet containing reference documentation for the MASS billing messages.
Wealth management technology consultant James Penman, principal and founder of Penman Consulting, coded the XML-based billing standards. Other MASS billing sub-committee members who helped develop the messaging schema include Prudential Investments vice president James Quartuccio; Advisorport manager Craig Levin; and Invesco director of operations Mary Gentempo.
Billing is one of five MMI MASS standards sub-committees that also include Trading; Reconciliation; Account Origination and Maintenance (AOM); and Model Maintenance. Later this year, the AOM sub-committee will be publishing V1.1 of its standards, and Model Maintenance is expected to release its first set of standards. Financial services firms and software vendors are encouraged to visit the MASS web site (http://mass-committee.org, under Forums in the Community section) to download and implement the messagingessaging schema and corresponding documentation.
"These new billing standards allow organizations to talk the same language when communicating fee and invoicing data," said Jones. "All of our valuable standards initiatives will drive industry growth by improving connectivity and process efficiency among market participants."