DST International (DSTi), the leader in business solutions for the financial services industry, announces today that AXA-Minmetals Assurance Company Ltd. in Shanghai, China has gone live with HiPortfolio/3.
Axa-Minmetals, founded in 1999, is a joint venture of AXA Group and Minmetals Group, the first Sino-French insurance company in China and also the first life insurer to be approved by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission after it was established. The gross premium of AXA-Minmetals in 2004 reached RMB 175 million (US $ 21 million), a 40% increase on the previous year.
The HiPortfolio/3 solution, which has gone live, has been instrumental in improving both back and front office processes. AXA-Minmetals applies its flexible set-up to enable the business users to look at their assets and portfolio in multiple different points of view (accounting, client, management and investment manager-centric). The Investment Department e.g. can now obtain analysis on their asset based on their own point of view. Also, the HiPortfolio/3 investment management function enables the investment department to have accurate and timely information on their holding at any time, independent to whether the back office has finished their accounting processes.
Ken Ng, Chief Financial Officer at AXA-Minmetals states: "The main reason we chose HiPortfolio/3 is its ability to greatly improve the accuracy and efficiency in our back office investment accounting processes. In addition, as the China market continues to develop, in particular with the incumbent introduction of Qualified Institutional Investors Scheme whereby local institutional investors will be allowed to invest in overseas markets, we will be dealing with increasing complexity in the back office operations in terms of instruments covered, operation processes and investment processes. HiPortfolio/3's multi-currency functionality, together with its vast coverage of different investment instruments gives us the solid foundation to support these future challenges."
Rhonda Lepsch, DSTi's Chief Executive Officer Asia comments: "We are obviously delighted with this implementation in the Chinese market; the AXA-Minmetals project underlines our strong commitment to the Chinese marketplace. We have been working with other AXA companies over the years and we are proud that they have selected DSTi to support their fund management operations in this important and high-growth market. Change is a constant factor in China and the flexibility of our solution means that they will be ready to face the commercial opportunities over the years to come with an efficient operation."