A global wealth manager which was using ANZ Custodian Services for custody and clearing of Australia/NZ assets has switched to Citi Global Transaction Services, despite the ANZ division being purchased by JP Morgan Worldwide Securities Services.

The KBC Group decided to novate to Citi on the basis of its existing relationship with the US-based bank in Australia – KBC’s broking business is connected to the CitiConnect for Securities platform, which provides full life-cycle services for equities and managed funds.

JPMorgan WSS has bigger fish to fry at present than the KBC business, which is not yet thought to represent significant FUM or transaction volume in Australia.

Apart from taking on around 180 people from the ANZ Custodian Services business, and hiring 14 more from a single competitor custodian in the past fortnight, JPMorgan WSS is also awaiting the results of the ING Australia custody tender being run by Marian Azer of Mercer Sentinel.

JPMorgan is an incumbent global custodian for that business, while ANZ had domestic custody duties.