Atlantic Fund Services, fund service provider in Central and Eastern Europe with offices in Warsaw and Luxembourg, has joined Clearstream and Swift. Boards of Directors of both institutions approved Atlantic as a member. Atlantic will use Vestima+ and Swift to provide connectivity for international asset managers into Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries, as well as to support a number of Polish-based funds in their efforts to distribute to EU countries.
According to Roman Lewszyk, Atlantics CEO and previously Global Head of Transfer Agency business at Citigroup, Using Vestima+ and Swift will enable us to widen an array of messaging choices for clients who are interested in distributing their funds throughout Central and Eastern Europe. We plan to use those platforms to support a number of Polish companies that wish to bring their funds into Pan-European markets. As one of the largest transfer agents, we support more than 12,000 professionals in the foremost banking and brokerage institutions in Poland.
With Vestima+ and Swift on board, Atlantic will provide an effective STP channel from local points-of-sale to a sub-transfer agent to the main TA in Luxembourg. This will shorten time-to-market for foreign funds entering Poland, and reduce error rate and overall risk for those funds. The company will participate in the test pilot of the Alliance Lite platform, a new solution provided by SWIFT, starting on January 18.
As a Supervised Financial Institution of SWIFT and a member of Clearstream, we are in a strong position to solidify our plans in regard to UCITS IV, says Lewszyk. The company currently supports a large number of Polish-domiciled funds, as well as Luxembourg and Dublin UCITS funds.
Atlantic has been providing services to UCITS III funds for several years. With our recognized experience, technology and risk-averse compliance programs, we have, for the past 15 years, provided highly valued services to the most demanding clients. UCITS IV will also give Atlantic an opportunity to offer our fund services throughout Europe. In anticipation of this, in December, 2009, we opened an office in Luxembourg, and intend to open offices in other major financial centers.
D.C.