Fidelity has driven their initiative from Luxembourg and the UK, whilst Citco has led from their Italian and Irish sites, proving the cross-border nature of the solution. Strong volumes of live transactions have already been exchanged for subscriptions, redemptions and switches.

Bringing efficiency and value

Kathy Shackle, Director of Operations at Fidelity in Luxembourg explains, "This is an important step towards increased automation. The advantage of SWIFTNet Funds is that it allows automation of additional processes within the Mutual Fund business as well as standardization across the market place."

Andrea Milanesio, Director of Information Technology at Citco Bank Milan, agrees with the strength of SWIFT's offering. "We successfully completed the first phase of the migration from SWIFT ISO 150022 to XML ISO 20022, and found that the transition with Fidelity was extremely smooth. Cross-border orders routed to Fidelity from Citco Milan are now fully automated and based on the XML ISO 20022 standard. This is a significant step forward for automation and standardisation in the Mutual Fund community."

Industry take-up

Bill Gourlay, Global Head of Sales, Funds at SWIFT remarks, "We are delighted to see such significant industry players as Citco and Fidelity taking advantage of the services that we can provide to the Investment Funds market. The SWIFTNet Funds product is now able to offer a significant range of message types which will bring major benefits in terms of scalability, efficiency and risk reduction to all participants in the transactional lifecyle."