Access Data Corp., a provider of omnibus account transparency applications to the US mutual fund industry, has launched a proprietary shareholder transaction data exchange network.
Access Data Exchange aims to provide automated processing of shareholder data among mutual fund companies and financial intermediaries, so obviating the need to develop custom data feeds for each trading partner, and accelerating the mutual fund industry’s ability to comply with the requirements of SEC Rule 22c-2.
“With 500 mutual fund companies distributing over 8,000 mutual funds through 6,500 financial intermediaries, representing over 400 million accounts, the challenge to mutual fund companies and intermediaries to share data held in disparate formats is daunting,” says Daniel Cwenar, president and chief operating officer of Access Data Corp. “AccessDX solves the problem by providing normalized data from all platforms through one secure conduit which is accessible to all participants on a customized basis.”
The need for detailed shareholder data has become an important ingredient for meeting the new SEC Rule 22c-2, related to monitoring shareholder trading patterns in order to detect market timers. The Rule, which went into effect in March of 2005, has a compliance date of October 16, 2006. Rule 22c-2 requires financial intermediaries to provide mutual fund companies access to shareholder identification and transaction information upon request.
In anticipation of this new requirement, intermediaries and mutual fund companies are making plans to pass detailed shareholder data via the industry utility operated by the DTCC/NSCC, or via private data networks. “The clear advantage of AccessDX is that it aggregates data from all sources -industry sources like the DTCC/NSCC as well as the private intermediary networks. Private intermediary networks, such as data portals for investment advisors, record-keeping systems and trading platforms for retirement plans, and sub-accounting (Pr3) platforms for Broker/Dealers, only handle slices of the market. AccessDX can deliver it all,” explains Frank Polefrone, senior vice president of product development.