The integration of WTax within SimCorp’s integrated front-to-back investment management platform, SimCorp Dimension, will enable SimCorp clients fast and efficient recovery of foreign withheld tax on their assets, through a shared data source. It comes at a time where many asset owners and asset managers around the globe, are increasingly struggling with the painstaking operational challenge of reclaiming withheld tax, across authorities and jurisdictions.

In recent years, as in-house teams and custodial support has become stretched, the inability to keep up with multi-jurisdictional tax legislation, regulation and rulings has created a significant knowledge and resource gap, resulting in many institutional investors losing out on several basis points worth of entitled taxes, on yields and other investment income. The data integration between WTax and SimCorp aims to fill this gap, with the legal expertise needed, to boost the recovery of entitled income. Additionally, WTax’s unique business model, borne out of its successful record, means clients only pay for its services in the event of successful recovery.

Utilizing WTax’s optimized withholding tax recovery process, SimCorp’s global clients can eliminate the manual process of liaising with tax authorities across multiple jurisdictions, made more complex in currently heightened market conditions. At the same time, SimCorp will take full responsibility for the data processing between SimCorp Dimension and WTax, empowering firms to generate tax assets, without the need to create a new IT project, or assign additional resources and budget.

Anders Kirkeby, Head of Open Innovation, SimCorp comments: “SimCorp’s focus is transforming from the delivery of solutions, towards fulfilling the outcomes our clients desire. To achieve this, we are garnering a higher cadence of innovation, not only through SimCorp’s own research and development, but also via a number of partnerships within the broader fintech space. WTax fits right into this transformation, with its optimized recovery services and the added benefit of their unique business model. These are lean times for the buy side, where every possible asset, including recoverable tax, counts. Given our initial engagement with the industry we expect a strong uptake of this offering among our clients, with the benefit of improved net performance and without having to change investment strategy or require additional budget.”

Daniel Ginsburg, CEO of WTax adds: “‘Through our partnership with SimCorp, we are innovatively changing the withholding tax recovery space. We look forward to providing an efficient and automated answer to the current challenge many asset owners face with their recoveries, through this enhanced data collaboration with SimCorp and its clients.”

The collaboration forms part of SimCorp’s dedicated Open Innovation program, created to deliver SimCorp clients enhanced innovation, by leveraging the power and scale of a broader ecosystem of start-ups, fintechs, and cloud and data providers. Having delivered a native front-to-back core platform far ahead of the curve, SimCorp is moving towards the creation of a value-added ecosystem, to optimally support its clients’ future needs, through solutions and services that complement its flagship platform; SimCorp Dimension.