Mike Gordon

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.

Financial services firms have paid attention as a variety of mostly-American-owned digital companies have gained increasing market share, a trend that has increased notably during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since Amazon is one of the best-known of these firms, those who want to emulate its success have dubbed the process “Amazonisation”, a concept explored in more detail by a Luxembourg for Finance session held earlier this year.

Luxembourg’s fund industry association ALFI has announced the appointment of its executive committee. The appointment was made by ALFI’s board of directors and publicised in an 8 July 2021 press release.

The members of the committee are:

“Spac share prices slump as enthusiasm wanes”, announced the Financial Times on 2 May. On 4 May: “A reckoning for Spacs: will regulators deflate the boom?” Contrast such headlines with the title of a recent event held in Luxembourg “SPAC CRAZE: Why sponsors and targets have become crazy about Luxembourg”.

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.

Luxembourg slipped two places in an international ranking of the quality and depth of green finance offerings in financial centres. Luxembourg ranked in 6th place, putting it in the top 15 green finance centres. The Grand Duchy is second in the EU in the ranking, behind Amsterdam, which came out ahead of Zurich, London, Oslo and San Francisco.

In the previous edition of the assessment, Luxembourg had ranked 4th.

7th edition