Brewin Dolphin Limited, the UK's largest independent private-client investment management firm, today announced that it has elected to use Calastone's messaging settlement service for the settlement of its UK and Irish mutual fund transactions and will be taking advantage of Calastone's automated reconciliations service.
Calastone offers electronic order routing between fund buyers and fund managers whatever their preferred format and provides automated net settlement services through trade order matching. Brewin Dolphin first connected to Calastone's order routing transaction network in March 2009 and signing up to Calastone's settlement and reconciliation service will enable the fund provider to fully automate its order and business processing from order entry right through to settlement.
In response to increasing demand from distributors for centralisation and automation of the reconciliations function, Calastone's approach to standardisation of cross-border mutual fund messaging helps firms automate their regulatory reconciliations processes, historically a manual and resource-intensive requirement.
Commenting on the agreement, John Beeston, Director and Group Head of Business Support for Brewin Dolphin Limited, London said, "We have selected Calastone's settlement messaging and reconciliation services to complement our existing partnerships for the UK and Irish mutual fund markets. The structure of these markets being fragmented requires us to have efficient STP solutions. Calastone successfully delivered an operationally live primary market service in March 2010 and it is already being used in the UK by fund management houses and key distributors. We are confident that the use of Calastone's settlement and reconciliations services will continue to grow and we look forward to the benefits of further simplification, cost and risk reduction for our own internal processes, due to this standardisation and automation."
Kevin Lee Chief Executive of Calastone added, "Brewin Dolphin, having recently signed with FundSettle for their offshore funds settlement, has always supported the need for a primary settlement service for the UK market; I am delighted they have chosen Calastone, the leading settlement service for funds in the UK and Ireland. We have been settling live trades since March and with more than 65% of the UK fund providers live and an ever increasing number of distributors and platforms signing up, I am confident our solution meets the needs of the UK market."