SWIFT gets big wrap for managed funds test

SWIFT claims it has signed another of Australia’s largest wrap platforms to its SWIFTNet Funds industry test.

The wrap, which would join BT Wrap as a participant in the trial of SWIFT’s managed fund transaction messages, was finalising its agreement and could be revealed later in the week, according to SWIFT’s commercial director, Adam Wilson. The addition of the wrap would mean SWIFT had now signed up a total of ten organisations for the SWIFTNet Funds industry test – managers Vanguard Investments, ABN Amro Asset Management and Barclays Global Investors, administrators National Custodian Services (NCS), ANZ Custodian Services, HSBC Securities Services and hedge fund specialists Kingsway Taitz, platform BT Wrap, and fellow hub hopeful Ausmaq. The test aims to kickstart the moribund cause of standardisation of Australian managed fund transactions, which are still dominated by omnibus faxing and a “spaghetti” of peer-to-peer solutions between managers, custodians and platforms, according to Wilson. “The industry test is designed to have the community take the new ISO20022 standards – which unlike their predecessor are in XML format, and standardise every step from initial application to settlement – and agree on Australian market practice. That is, how those messages will be used between counterparties, the fields to be used, the bulking of transactions, the codes to be used and so forth,” he says. The trial was due to send its first trial messages in the second quarter, but Wilson said that would now happen in late July after some participants requested an extension due to the introduction of the Simpler Superannuation rules.