“I just can’t see the competitor custodians sitting down to share the information and fund the development. Why are the ones who’ve spent some money going to help their competitors solve their problems?…You’re going to need someone independent of the custodians to provide this,” Vaughan said.

He nominated the share registry groups, Computershare and Link Market Services, as obvious contenders.

“In particular, you think about Link buying AAS. It is now involved in the horrible complexity of super member administration, and the relative simplicity of share registry. Unit registry sits neatly somewhere in the middle of those.”