The new product allows fund administrators to consolidate their investor servicing and transfer agency operations onto a single, industrial-scale platform across all investment types.

Working closely alongside its key strategic clients, Multifonds has developed its alternatives capability and extended the former Multifonds Transfer Agent platform to fully support alternatives, rebranding it Multifonds Global Investor in the process.

Five leading administrator clients are already committed to using Multifonds Global Investor, with three out of the five, including European Fund Administration S.A. (EFA), already using the platform to operate alternative and long-only funds together on the single investor servicing and transfer agency platform. The platform already supports more than $1.2 trillion in assets globally.

Multifonds' recent online survey concluded that over 82% of the industry believed that convergence of the traditional and alternative industry will continue, and more than 65% of respondents agreed that updated AIFMD regulation will be a major catalyst for the continued convergence.

In addition to the investment in the platform itself, Multifonds has further expanded its alternatives expertise, by recruiting a pool of top talent.

Sern Tham, head of alternatives product, who joined Multifonds from Citadel (Omnium), today leads a team which includes industry experts such as Jeff Sedgwick who recently joined from Advent.

Further demonstrating its commitment to this area, Multifonds has recently broadened its presence in alternative hubs including New York and Luxembourg, by opening an office in Ireland, a leading centre for alternatives, headed by Alan Raftery, who previously led Koger's Dublin operations. In the US, Peter Muldoon joins from Linedata (previously GIS), where he was responsible for the Mfact and Mshare products globally.

Multifonds Global Investor has been designed specifically to meet eet the investor servicing needs of both the alternatives and traditional markets. It delivers the full breadth of functionality for alternatives, including partnership accounting, and for unitized funds, fund-level performance fees, using both investor equalization as well as series of shares processing. For long only funds, it delivers full fund distribution capabilities including commission structures and proven controls such as 4-eyes checking, control reports, audit trail, investor risk adequacy check and linking order processing with fund rules including AML/KYC.

Multifonds Global Investor fully supports a wide range of fund structures including limited partnerships, hedge funds with series of shares, hedge funds with equalization, master/feeder fund structures, fund of funds, alternative UCITS funds as well as mutual funds, money market funds, UCITS funds and unit trusts.

Oded Weiss, CEO of Multifonds, said, "We are delighted to offer clients a proven, scalable solution for alternative as well as traditional funds. Multifonds Global Investor is the only transfer agency product that can offer a combined long-only and alternatives solution. As a single platform across different fund types, it enables our clients to reduce their cost of ownership, deliver consistent reporting to both managers and investors, and improve operational efficiency through implementation of a consistent operating model."

John Glesener, Director, Product & Strategic Development & Member of the Executive Committee at EFA commented, "We are delighted that Multifonds have invested so heavily into their TA platform to ensure that it efficiently handles both traditional and alternatives funds. The platform is already well proven within EFA for UCITS and long only funds and it made total sense for us to extend our implementation of the platform to support the convergence of our traditional business with the alternative funds. We have extended our use to incorporate performance fee equalization functionality for our global transfer agency business. The platform gives us the benefits of scalability and control demanded by long only funds, uniquely combined with the complexity and flexibility for alternatives, all on the single Multifonds TA platform."