Asset Servicing

Hopes are high in Luxembourg that the Grand Duchy this year will be able to claim a sizeable chunk of a growing European market for Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLOs), a structured financial product pooling corporate debts. With an update in its securitisation regime that allows active management Luxembourg wants to be competitive and seduce CLO managers from other countries, notably Ireland, to move their business. 

Investors are increasingly turning to alternative instruments for diversification, risk mitigation and to future-proof their returns, especially given today’s market conditions. This has resulted in surging interest in alternative investments from a wider variety of market participants, which is forcing the alternative asset servicing industry to adapt to new demands. 

A worldwide increase in regulation on client reporting and the need to provide better service to clients are driving asset managers to look hard at their client reporting objectives, according to a recent opinion article by Dominique Tomassoni, product strategy director for Digital/Client/Regulatory reporting solutions at NeoXam, a French financial software company.

Investment Officer Luxembourg recently had an opportunity to speak with Stephan Matti (pictured above), Group Head of Asset Servicing & Financial Intermediaries at Quintet Private Bank, about his role and the advantages of offering asset servicing and financial intermediary services from within an organisation that also has a large private banking operation.

How has pandemic affected the Luxembourg alternative fund sector? What is the shake out from Brexit? Has regulatory reform in Ireland increased competition for Luxembourg? What about crypto-asset funds? These questions and more were addressed at the “Global View on Alternative Investments 2021” webinar hosted earlier this month by US trade association NICSA in partnership with ALFI.

Despite much talk about the cost and efficiency benefits of digitalisation and clients moving very quickly to adopt it, some parts of the fund sector still rely on manual processing. Some in the sector are calling for regulators to play an increased role in setting standards.

A panel entitled “Trends in fund distribution as investors have become more digital than ever - Is the fund industry ready?” discussed the current situation as part of ALFI’s recent Digi Pulse Amsterdam virtual event.

Acolin, a Zurich-based provider of regulatory and cross-border fund distribution services across Europe, has acquired Luxembourg-based Global Fund Analytics (GFA), a SaaS-based data collection and analytics platform for asset managers and distributors.

Outsourcing middle office activities such as processing transactions made by asset managers’ front offices is the biggest growth market in the asset servicing business, according to State Street’s Dick Taggart. ‘We want to become the Amazon of asset management outsourcing’, he told Investment Officer.

Fund platform Allfunds has announced its intention to list its shares on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange “in the coming weeks”. The announcement comes just days after it became public that Allfunds is planning to launch its first 12 mandate solutions on its fund platform.

Luxembourg’s third-party management companies (ManCos) are increasingly positioning themselves as regulatory problem solvers for all types of asset manager. This appears to be a burgeoning niche for the Luxembourg fund and asset servicing industry.